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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



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OUR CHILDREN 



HINTS FROM PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE 
FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS 



BY 

PAUL CARUS 



KOMMT, LASST UNS UNSEREN KiNDERN LEBEN ! " 

— FROEBEL. 



CHICAGO: 
THE OPEN" COURT PUBLISHmG COMPANY 

LONDON AGENTS 

Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd. 
1906 



I LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Twe Copies Received 
JAN 2 1907 
, C«pyrlet)t Entry , 

CUSS ^ XXc, No. 

COPY B. 



,r^. 



COPYRIGHT BY 

THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHIiSG CO. 

190G 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Education and Progress 1 

The First Steps 6 

Parenthood 13 

Imagination and Love of Truth 22 

Worldly Prudence 28 

The Use of Money 34 

Square Dealing 40 

Sympathy with Animals 46 

Don't Say Don't 50 

Treatment of a Naughty Child 58 

Stimulate Self-Criticism 64 

Do Not Punish 67 

Direct and Divert, but do not Suppress ... 76 

Sanitary Attention to Children 82 

The Significance of Naming Things in the Nur- 
sery 94 

Counting 103 

Mind-Reading and Arithmetic 109 

Natural Science 120 

Facts not Fancy 125 

Foreign Languages 128 

Mathematics 134 

Music in Education 140 

Playful Instruction, and Genius 147 

Rationalism in the Nursery 160 

Mutual Education of Children 171 

Fear and Circumspection 178 

Santa Claus 190 

Index 205 



OUR CHILDREN 

EDUCATION AND PROGRESS 

How can we judge of a civilization, and 
is there any standard at all by which we 
may gage its power and significance? 

This question should not be impossible to 
answer and we believe that the replies given 
by different thinkers will be characteristic 
of their philosophy. It is a test question 
that will reveal the true nature of a system 
of thought. St. Francis of Assisi and his 
followers find its answer in the supremacy 
of the spiritual over the material, under- 
standing by the spiritual the mode of 
thought which is entertained by the priest. 
The philosopher of matter and motion 
measures the advance of society by the 
complexity of its phenomena; to him evo- 
lution is a progress from the homogeneous 
to the heterogeneous. We agree with 



2 OUR CHILDREN. 

neither and would say that culture is at- 
tained in the measure that truth has been 
actualized in life. 

We insist that the actualization of truth 
is the only standard which can be used as 
a criterion, but we will not deny that there 
are many indicators of progress which like 
straws in the wind are signs of the times, 
and most of them will not be contradictory 
with each other. Of these indicators there 
are as many as there are diverse attitudes 
in life, nay more than that, as many as there 
are functions of life in which progress may 
manifest itself ; and we will enumerate only 
a few of them. 

It has been claimed that the standing of 
woman in the community, the respect shown 
to her, the assurance that her rights will be 
protected, may be regarded as an unfailing 
evidence of civilized conditions. The finan- 
cier is inclined to regard that nation as 
leading the others in the march of progress 
which controls the finances of the world. 
The engineer takes his measure of value ac- 
cording to the amount and efficiency of ma- 



EDUCATION AND PROGKEStS. 3 

chinery used for tlie manufacture of goods. 
In the domain of transportation most is 
made of the proportion of railroad lines to 
the area, or perhaps the population of a 
country. So every one uses the measure to 
which he is accustomed in his own home, 
his trade, or his own vocation, and even the 
soap-manufacturer gages the civilization of 
a people according to the consumption (i. e., 
the use, perhaps even the waste) of soap. 

But if we attribute to the parent the senti- 
ment that the rank of a community in the 
scale of progress should range according to 
the significance ascribed to the education of 
children, we would perhaps have an indi- 
cator that comes nearest to the real criterion 
of true culture. 

The higher an animal ranges in the scale 
of life the more it stands in need of educa- 
tion. The lowest organisms needno parental 
cnr'e whatever for they merely vegetate, but 
the more prominent becomes the part played 
by the mind the less complete is a creature 
at its birth, and the less prepared for the 
struggle of existence. More than other 



4 OUR CHILDREN. 

creatures, man needs protection and instruc- 
tion, so as to be preserved during the tender 
age of infancy and fully equipped for the 
heavy demands of life. 

Our frontispiece, a picture by Georges La- 
vergne, represents a child's first steps un- 
der the mother's guiding love, symbolizing 
the instinctive anxiety of mankind to lead 
the growing generation in the right path 
and develop its latent forces so that when 
the present generation has passed away, it 
will in its turn take up the torch which has 
been handed down and carry it further on 
in the advancement of the race. 

The educational ideal does not merely 
mean a preservation of the treasures of the 
past, but includes future progress. It is 
not sufficient that the children of to-day be 
like their fathers. We understand the 
meaning of the law of evolution better than 
our ancestors did, and since we can give our 
children better chances in their lives than 
we ourselves possessed, we can expect of 
them more than we have accomplished. 
They should surpass us, and it is our duty 



EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 5 

to enable them to do so; for Goethe was 
right when he urged that "the son be better 
than his father!" 

Our lives are limited, and the older we 
grow the more will our personal interests 
be narrowed and reduced; but we can keep 
our hearts young if we live with, and for, 
and in, our children. 

They can attain what was unattainable to 
us, and they can become w^hat w^e wished to 
be, but the best of it for us is that we our- 
selves can be instrumental in helping them 
to actualize our ideals. 



THE FIRST STEPS 

The first steps we take in life, especially 
the first steps in our intellectual and emo- 
tional development, are not so indifferent 
as may at first sight appear. 

Children are imitative, and their souls 
are built up by the impressions which they 
receive. Every single experience, every ob- 
servation of older folks, of parents, of 
nurses, but especially of elder brotliers and 
sisters, and generally of all belonging to the 
circle of their acquaintance, exercises a 
powerful influence in the building up of the 
character of the child. 

The child inherits from its ancestors a 
great many things which constitute the cap- 
ital with which man starts in life. This 
capital consists not only of the bodily or- 
ganism with all its details, but also of the 
mental as well as emotional dispositions and 
aptitudes, the significance of which can 



THE FIRST STEPS. .7 

never be overrated. But this endowment 
is not definite either in quantity or quality, 
because the application made of it, the use 
to which it is put, and the moulding of this 
raw material into concrete forms is not in- 
herited. The formative work is done dur- 
ing the life of the individual, first by edu- 
cation, then by experience ; during childhood 
in our homes, our schools, and social sur- 
roundings, and when we have reached ma- 
turity and become independent, by our- 
selves. Hence the paramount importance of 
education. 

The babe's brain contains besides other 
areas of importance, an undeveloped part 
in the so-called Island of Reil, which is to 
be the center of speech. The disposition to 
develop language is absent in any animal 
brain. But while the aptitude for speech is 
inherited, language itself is not. Our 
mother tongue is not born with us but must 
be acquired. A talkative propensity may 
be inherited, but the language which a man 
is to speak in life depends on the influences 
of his early childhood, which determine not 



8 OUR CHILDREN. 

only the nature of his cast of mind, his na- 
tionality, etc., but also the character and 
usage of his speech in after life, whether or 
not his linguistic talent will make of him 
an orator, a poet, an author, a philologist, 
a linguist, or perhaps a mere gossip. 

A child endowed with musical talent 
might Avith proper surroundings become a 
second Mozart, the model of a pure and clas- 
sical taste, or a composer of rag time tunes ; 
or, if he grows up among absolutely un- 
musical people, his musical disposition may 
remain latent and show itself only in a 
freakish way, producing, like a fallow field, 
an exuberance of tonal weeds. 

The raw diamond is valuable in itself, but 
its greatest worth consists of opportunity. 
It becomes a valuable solitaire only by cut- 
ting. 

The soul of every babe that is born into 
the world possesses a w^orth that needs de- 
velopment if its opportunities shall be 
changed into actual values. It is the duty 
of parents to see to it that this is done, and 
the right kind of parents will endeavor to 



THE FIRST STEPS. 9 

have the better part of their own selves, with 
an excision of their shortcomings, reared in 
their children. 

We all of us owe much, in fact our entire 
being, to the past, for we actually are the 
sum total of the soul-life of all of our an- 
cestors; and here in our children,— or for 
those who have no children of their own, 
here in the growing generation, — is the place 
to pay our debt. 

And upon the whole, parents are well in- 
clined to do their duty. Nature has her own 
sly ways of doing her pleasure, and so she 
makes people press on to the destined goal 
that she proposes. She appeals to self-love, 
and even to vanity, to make us work for her 
great aim which is the procreation of an in- 
creasingly improved mankind. We believe 
in evolution, and the doctrine of evolution 
promises that the future man shall range as 
much higher than the present man, as the 
present man ranges above the proto-savage, 
the primitive homo in spe just emerging 
from the state of brutehood. As yet we 
have only imperfectly realized the human 



10 OUR CHILDREN. 

ideal. The man of the future shall be a 
true man, higher and better and nobler than 
the average man of to-day. We can all do 
our share in reaching our aim. We are all 
tending toward it and yearning for it ; some 
do so consciously, some unconsciously, and 
more or less intelligently. All our most 
personal interests, our love of life, our in- 
stinct of self-preservation, our interest in 
our own character, our hankering after the 
immortalization of our own particular per- 
sonality, our determination to maintain oui*- 
selves in the struggle for life, are intimately 
interwoven with the great plan of nature, 
with the realization of the highest type of 
manhood, — ^the actualization of the human 
ideal. This explains why parentage is re- 
spected among all races and nations as the 
noblest calling of man. 

The first impressions made on a child's 
mind are especially important as they form 
the basis of man's whole future develop- 
ment, and they remain for a long time, some- 
times forever, the standard by which all 
later impressions are measured. Should 



THE FIRST STEPS. 11 

we not, therefore, exercise the gi'eatest care, 
and instead of leaving the first mental im- 
pressions of children to accident, see to it 
that they are throughout correct? 

The first education of babies is frequently 
left to mieducated nurses, who sometimes 
have not the slightest idea of the sacredness 
of their trust and know very little of the 
right treatment of infants. Nurses should 
be chosen with great care and should always 
remain under the personal supervision of 
the mother. They should be mere assistants 
of the mother, but never take her place. 
How many of us are oblivious to the fact 
that whatever we do and say, whatever error 
we commit, whatever example we may set, 
is impressed upon and perpetuated in the 
little souls in our charge ! Let us keep this 
in mind and let us look upon the child as a 
sacred trust. 

Let us give children the right start in life, 
and let us begin at the very beginning. Let 
us not wait until the children have grown 
old enough to understand us and be capable 
of entering into our plans and ideas. Let 



12 OUR CHILDREN. 

US begin the work of moulding their souls 
while they are still plastic, and not wait un- 
til character is already forming, for then 
it may be too late. 

Let all parents join in the sentiment ex- 
pressed by the great apostle of education in 
the words, Kommt, lasst uns unsern Kin- 
dern lehen! "Come, let us live for our 
children!'^ 

And if, indeed, we do live for our children, 
it will not be a sacrifice on our part, not a 
waste or loss of energy, for the reward we 
receive in return is much richer and by far 
more valuable than all the gifts we have to 
offer. Children are a fountain of youth in 
which our hearts are rejuvenated. 



PARENTHOOD 

Parents that cannot make up their minds 
to live for their children have no business 
to have children. Children are not dolls; 
they should not become toys for our amuse- 
ment and diversion. Children are pledges. 
The possession of children implies duties, 
and the fulfilment of these duties demands 
not only a painstaking labor and watchful- 
ness, but also great discretion and wisdom. 

The obligation of educating children ex- 
ercises a most beneficial influence upon par- 
ents, and it is by no means untrue that the 
most humanizing factor in the evolution of 
mankind has been the presence of children, 
implying the necessity of educating them. 
The proposition to discuss ^'the education 
of parents by their children" ^ is not as 
paradoxical as it seems. We may say that 

^ This is the title of an article by Carus Sterne, which 
appeared in The Open Court, Vol. I. Nos. 22-23. 

13 



14 OUR CHILDREN. 

no one, neither man nor woman, has grown 
to mental and moral maturity until he or 
she has been confronted with this noblest of 
all duties, the care of bringing up children. 
Cams Sterne ^ says : 

''Every child requites much of the love be- 
stowed upon it by the parents, by making them 
better and more perfect beings than they were 
before its advent into the family. In fact, the 
highest polish, the finishing touches of educa- 
tion, are given people neither by home, school, 
nor church, but by their own children. Should 
they be so unfortunate as not to have any, they 
will experience difficulties in replacing this lack- 
ing factor in the education of their affections." 

Frequently sexual love is spoken of as the 
factor that exercises a civilizing influence 
upon man; but Cams Sterne, "at the peril 
of exposing himself to heresy in poetical 
matters," declares that on the contrary it 

2 Carus Sterne is the now, de plume of Dr. Ernst 
Krause, of Berlin, a well-known German author of scien- 
tific and popular-scientific works, his most celebrated work 
being Werden und Vergehen. He is counted among the 
foremost evolutionists of Germany, and did not fail from 
the very beginning to emphasize the moral significance of 
the doctrine of evolution. 



' PARENTHOOD. 15 

engenders cruelty, produces destructiveness 
and brings about beneficent results only 
when resulting in a firm union, demanding 
reciprocal surrender and self-sacrifice. 

The religious aspirations of mankind so 
important in history, are of a secondary 
growth, for they develop from the relation 
between parents and children. Says the 
same author: 

''Out of parental and filial love there devel- 
ops, even in immature minds, a universal love 
for humanity. The infant becomes the Saviour 
— the earthly father becomes the prototype of 
the all-wise, all-bountiful Father in heaven." 

Protestants as a rule object to Mariolatry 
as pagan. They are aware of the pagan 
features of any image worship and are there- 
fore disgusted with their Roman Catholic 
brethren. But belief in the divinity of 
motherhood contains no less truth than the 
belief in the divinity of fatherhood. 
Protestants, as a rule, believe in the latter, 
and are therefore not aware of the Protes- 
tant paganism that results from a sensual 
and literal interpretation of the belief in 



16 OUR CHILDREN. 

God the Father. The family relation is not 
dual, but trinitarian. It is not parent and 
child, but father, mother, and child. 

Carus Sterne, too, touches upon this point. 
Though Protestant by birth and absolutely 
independent in religious matters by his 
scientific education, he says: 

''The early endeavor to elevate the mother 
into the realm of the divine is a deeply felt and 
psychologically well justified factor in the de- 
velopment of Christian dogma. It was thus 
that the mother with the infant on her lap was 
made the chief picture at the shrines. The 
"Holy Family," so typically portrayed by 
Raphael, wins all hearts, even at this day, in 
Protestant countries, for it justly makes the nur- 
sery the sanctuary which produces and constant- 
ly feeds the pure flame of love of man and of 
God." 

The possession of children is a blessing, 
and the joy that parents may derive from 
them is immeasurable. It would neverthe- 
less be a grave mistake to think that such 
happiness can be had simply through the 
procreation of progeny and by indulging, 
simian fashion, in a love of one's own off- 



PARENTHOOD. 17 

spring. The bliss of parenthood has to be 
bought with many cares, with sacrifices of 
all kinds, and with far-seeing forethought. 

It is a common observation that the char- 
acter of people changes for the better, the 
moment they become parents. The average 
man is thoughtless and perhaps even frivo- 
lous, but as soon as the duties of parenthood 
approach him, he begins to reflect and be- 
comes considerate. Now he weighs his 
words and takes life more seriously. Many 
who never before gave a thought to the prob- 
lems of religion, because they are lukewarm 
and do not care to have a settled opinion, 
pause for the first time in their lives and 
ask themselves whether they had better teach 
belief in God or unbelief. The moral views 
of people assume a decidedly more definite 
form when they think of their children, and 
our behavior is influenced by the idea that 
in our habits we are setting an example to 
our sons and daughters. 

What a wonderful plan it is of nature to 
split up the evolution of mankind (whose 
life in its entirety forms one uninterruxDted 



18 OUR CHILDREN. 

line of progress) into innumerable sections 
of individual lives! We could very well 
imagine a different arrangement. The in- 
dividual and the race might coincide, and we 
should then have the growth and evolution 
of one immortal personality, in the place 
of an immortal race broken up into a pro- 
gressive succession of mortal individuals. 
There would be no death in the dispensation 
of the unlimited life of such a race-individ- 
ual ; nor would there be any birth, and man- 
kind would not need to start life over again 
with every new baby ; there would be no need 
of education; no need of love. But where 
would the interest in life remain, if this 
mankind-individual lived through centuries 
and millenniums without being obliged to 
continue its existence through begetting and 
educating children *? Life would be unpala- 
table if it were not broken up into limited 
pieces and constantly started over again. 
What a monstrosity such an immortal man- 
kind-individual would be! It would think 
and feel as does Goethe's Mephistopheles, 
who in Scene IV says to Faust : 



PARENTHOOD. 19 

''Trust me, who for millenniums, year by 
year, 
The same tough cud must masticate and 
test : 
No mortal from the cradle to the bier 
Can ever this unsavory stuff digest. 
Trust one of us to whom this life is known; 
The whole can be endured by God alone." 

The mutuality of life is the condition of 
our moral ideals which naturally have a 
tendency to break through the narrow range 
of exclusively individual interests ; it points 
beyond the sphere of individual life without 
annihilating the importance of the individ- 
ual. It makes the individual the represent- 
ative of superindividual aspirations which, 
through the inherited parental affections, 
have become sufficiently deep-seated as to 
well up spontaneously whenever needed, 
sometimes even in criminal characters, in 
spite of themselves. Egotism and altruism 
are both useful and beneficent instincts. 
They balance each other, and where either 
is missing the other will run to seed and do 
great harm. 

Our ethics, our religion, nay, our whole 



20 OUR CHILDREN. 

interest in life, is simply an expression of 
the natural constitution of mankind, viz., 
of the system of mutuality. 

It may be wrong to say that without the 
mutuality of life there would be no ethics 
at all, because another arrangement would 
simply imply other rules of conduct than 
those w^hich we now call moral. In other 
worlds of a different constitution, with other 
interrelations, there may be other needs, and 
consequently its creatures w^ould aspire af- 
ter other ideals. It is difficult to say what 
might be; but this much is sure, that our 
moral and religious conceptions are a prod- 
uct of the conditions which have shaped 
our lives. However much religious truths 
have been represented as a contradiction to 
nature, they are nature (though, of course, 
nature transfigured) in its highest efflores- 
cence; and wherever for a time, through 
gross sensualism and childish immaturity, 
by a literal conception of parables and an 
unspiritual pagan interpretation of the na- 
ture of dogmas, mankind has drifted into 
a hostility to nature, religion lost its true 



PARENTHOOD. 21 

significance, but showed always, even in the 
darkest ages, a tendency to return to a 
purer, more elevating, and more natural 
morality. 

It is mutuality that gives zest to life and 
makes it worth living. The interest that 
keeps us in the world and attaches us to ex- 
istence is like the vault of a massive struc- 
ture, where stones keep one another up by 
inclining toward and pressing upon one an- 
other. Mutuality holds up the lofty arch as 
firmly and as solidly as the interrelation 
that obtains among the various members of 
human society naturally produces and sus- 
tains ethics; and the most important, be- 
cause fundamental, mutuality of human life 
is the relation between parents and children. 
It is apparent that mankind would never 
have developed true humanit}^, had it never 
witnessed a mother's love. The sublimest 
and noblest sentiments would be still un- 
known, had not generation after generation 
been trained in the school of parental care 
and self-sacrifice. Men have learned the 
lessons of life by living for their children. 



IMAGINATION AND LOVE OF TRUTH 

Love of knowledge is a good thing, but 
love of truth is more important than any- 
thing else, and should be impressed upon a 
child's mind as early as possible; but we 
must not be blind to the fact that the con- 
ception of truth can scarcely develop be- 
fore the fourth or fifth year. Although the 
idea is very simple to an adult, it is, in its 
full significance, quite complex, — indeed, too 
complex to be appreciated in all its im- 
portance by children. 

The first condition for developing the love 
of truth is never to let the punishment of a 
small criminal follow his confession of a 
trespass. For fear is the main, and in many 
cases, the only, incentive to telling lies, — 
lies in the sense of wilful misstatements of 
facts, of deceptions, made for the purpose 
of gaining advantages or escaping unpleas- 
ant results. 

22 



IMAGINATION. 23 

We ought to know that sometimes a child 
tells untruths which are not lies. Children 
have a vivid imagination, and they are apt 
to invent facts. A certain small boy who 
was suspected of having broken a dish de- 
nied the fact, while his little brother, who 
could not have done the deed, positively as- 
sured his parents that he had broken the 
dish. He told an untruth simply because 
he imagined how he might have broken it. 
The case was interesting to him, and in his 
vivid imagination he depicted all the details, 
and told with great complacency a long story 
describing how the accident had happened. 

To many children the dreams of their 
imagination at once become as real as the 
reminiscences of actual events, and in our 
fervor of impressing upon children a love 
of truth, we must not be too quick to con- 
demn a little sinner before we positively 
know that he tells not a mere untruth but 
an actual lie invented for the purpose of 
shirking his responsibility. 

Love of truth ought to be closely connected 
with self-esteem, and what is commonly 



24 OUR CHILDREN. 

called the sense of honor. There ought to 
be no worse opprobrium than the defa- 
mation of being a liar. 

When years ago I was a scientific instruc- 
tor at the Royal Corps of Cadets at Dres- 
den, I adopted the principle, whenever any 
disturbance of a recitation occurred, of 
simply asking the question, ''Who did it?" 
On the first occasion, of course, there was 
no response, whereupon I spoke contempt- 
uously of the spirit of the whole class, in 
which there was some one too cowardly to 
stand up frankly and acknowledge the mis- 
chief which he had committed. I argued 
that all the members of the class were re- 
sponsible for the esprit de corps; and that 
so long as such cowardice was condoned and 
encouraged, I could have no respect for the 
class. When this happened for the first 
time, the charge of cowardice stung the evil- 
doer, but he did not rise to confess, although 
the whole class grew more and more indig- 
nant and urged him to do so. The duty of 
the class, I continued, is so to influence its 
members that none of them shall shirk the 



IMAGINATION. 25 

responsibility and fail to acknowledge what- 
ever he has done. In a society that tolerates 
suspicious characters one must be on one's 
guard ; and so a teacher cannot treat a class 
in which some refuse to confess the truth 
frankly and openly, as young friends, but 
as inferiors, comparable to inmates of a 
penitentiary who are always under the sus- 
picion of wrong-doing. The result was that 
somebody rose to expose the delinquent; 
but I refused to listen to the denunciations, 
and stigmatized, at the same time, in strong 
terms, the practice of playing the informer, 
saying that I did not care to know who did 
it, but hoped that the guilty one would have 
honor enough to tell the truth, if it w^ere 
for no other motive than to avert suspicion 
from an innocent comrade. The malefactor 
appeared after the recitation and denounced 
himself privately, but here again I refused 
to listen to the confession, and told him the 
proper thing would be to stand up before the 
whole class and publicly acknowledge his 
guilt. What he had done before the whole 
class, he must confess to before the whole 



26 OUR CHILDREN. 

class. Without any further suggestion, at 
the next recitation the malefactor jumped 
up, and in a few clear words made the con- 
fession required. 

An occurrence of this kind took place once 
only in every new class and never again. 
The class understood the principle, and 
whenever anything out of the way happened, 
whenever there was a noise which was diffi- 
cult to trace, or whenever a disturbance of 
any kind took place, the cause of which 
could not be discovered, the question, "Who 
did if?" was always followed by the prompt 
self-surrender of the delinquent. He knew, 
of course, that he would not be punished, 
nor was it ever necessary, because the con- 
fession ended the joke, if there was any joke 
in it, for its repetition had become impos- 
sible. 

When I was a child attending school, the 
investigation of criminal cases was a fa- 
vorite pastime for several of my teachers. I 
remember that many of our lessons were 
idled away by cross-examinations. The 
professor played the judge in court, and 



IMAGINATION. 27 

every one of the boys deemed it his duty to 
mislead him. It was almost impossible to 
learn the truth, for the esprit de corps of 
our classes resulted in a very strong notion 
that belying the teacher was the proper 
thing to do, and any one who had told the 
truth plainly, either in self-confession or in 
denunciation of others would have been re- 
garded as an abject fellow who, without self- 
respect, bowed his neck under the yoke of 
our common oppressors. During my expe- 
rience as a teacher at the Royal Corps of 
Cadets, I was never obliged to undertake 
any investigation, and I may add, I never 
had reason to doubt the word of the boys. 
Many of them are now officers in the Ger- 
man army, or may do duty in the very insti- 
tution at which they were educated, and I 
hope they have learned to treat soldiers and 
cadets in the same spirit. There is no rea- 
son why the same method should not be 
employed in schools and nurseries all over 
the world. 



WORLDLY PRUDENCE 

While love of truth must become part of 
the foundation of a child's mind, we should 
not one-sidedly press the importance of 
truth to the utter neglect of discretion. 
Common prudence teaches that we have to 
tell the truth at the right moment and in the 
right way. Love of truth should not be 
identified with bluntness. We are by no 
means requested to tell the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth, to every- 
body. We should tell the truth above all 
considerations where it is our duty to do so, 
and that depends upon circumstances. 

The phj^sician who shocks a sick man by 
bluntly telling him, "Your disease is fatal," 
may be guilty of a criminal offence in so far 
as he hastens the dissolution of his patient. 
He must be on his guard and break the truth 
in an appropriate way, as the occasion re- 
quires. Due reserve is not lying, and blunt- 

28 



WORLDLY PRUDENCE. 29 

ness is not love of truth. We must consider 
the consequences of our words, and choose 
such expressions as will bring about the re- 
sult at which we truthfully aim. We must 
tell the truth with discretion. 

The main thing is to tell the truth to our- 
selves. The old evening prayer has a very 
good feature in its review of the day's work, 
and its self-criticism, at any rate, should be 
kept up. Whenever a child has done any- 
thing wrong, let him consider it in a quiet 
mood when he retires for the night, and 
drive home to him the lesson that, the more 
severe he is with himself, the more apt he 
will be to make a success in life. Most fail- 
ures in life are direct results of vanity, 
which prevents us from seeing our own 
faults. Truthfulness to ourselves must be 
the basis of our truthfulness to others; as 
Shakespeare says: 

"This above all: to thine own self be true, 
And it must follow as the night the day 
Thou canst not then be false to any man. ' ' 

As to cleverness and discretion, I know 
no better way to cultivate them than by 



30 OUR CHILDREN. 

reading with the children ^^sop's Fables 
and even Reynard the Fox. The former 
have the advantage of being short, and most 
of them need no explanation as to the les- 
son involved. The moral of the latter, how- 
ever, is almost dangerous, and can at any 
rate be easily misinterpreted, because it 
seems to teach that cunning is the most 
valuable equipment in life, and that the 
clever liar will win in the end. But I am 
not willing to reject the story on such easy 
terms, for many of the situations and many 
of the delineations of character are too real- 
istic and intrinsically true not to teach a 
useful lesson. 

Reynard the Fox is a story without a 
hero ; it does not hold up an ideal to be imi- 
tated, but teaches us the dangers of life. 
A few words of explanation will prevent 
children from drawing the wrong moral 
from the story. First we must call their at- 
tention to the fact that all the creatures so 
ingeniously duped by the fox are caught by 
their own faults — Bruin, the bear, by his 
love of honey; Tibert, the cat, by his pro- 



WORLDLY PRUDENCE. 31 

clivity for mousing ; Bellin, the ram, by his 
ambition to appear as a clever councillor; 
Kyward, the hare, by his stupidity, which in 
a certain sense is a vice too, and which our 
children must be taught to overcome as a 
matter of duty. It is true that Reynard is 
the personification of cunning, but Isegrim 
the wolf, his enemy, has all the faults of the 
fox with the sole exception that he is phys- 
ically his superior, and is, in addition, vora- 
cious, improvident, slovenly, and villainous. 
While morally the wolf is no better than the 
fox, the latter is at least clever; ingenuity 
is his redeeming feature. And with what 
a humor are all the other characters de- 
scribed! Grimbart, the badger, the un- 
critical admirer of Reynard; Baldwin, the 
ass, the learned clerk; the she-ape, Ruck- 
inaw^, an intriguing chambermaid. Noble, 
the lion, is a very short-sighted sovereign 
who becomes a mere puppet, a plaything, 
and, without knowing it himself, is used by 
Reynard as a tool. The fox comes out 
victorious, because he is smarter than his 
enemies, but for all that, he remains a ras- 



32 OUR CHILDREN. 

cal who constantly runs the risk of ending 
on the gallows. 

With some such hints, a reading of this 
ancient animal epic will be very instructive, 
especially if after its perusal the children 
are told that the tale reflects the age in 
which it was written — an age in which true 
goodness was rare and the importance of a 
genuine love of truth was not yet appreci- 
ated. Civilization was then so low that 
cleverness, even in the low form of cmming, 
was uncommon, and whenever found it was 
appreciated as a rare gift from heaven. It 
takes quite a clever man to tell a lie with 
approximate consistency, and the Odyssey, 
written in an analogous period of culture in 
the Greek nation, expatiates with great sat- 
isfaction upon the virtue of lying and the 
mendacious genius of its versatile and in- 
ventive hero, whose usual epithet, ttoAvVt^ti? 
(he of many counsels), sounds like a transla- 
tion of Begin-hard} 

There can be no doubt that the animal 

^ Reynard means " strong in council " ( regin = wisdom, 
advice, council ; and hard = strong, firm ) . 



WORLDLY PRUDENCE. 33 

fables, including the story of Reynard the 
Fox, are among the best methods, if not the 
very best, to teach in a playful way the first 
elements of worldly wisdom. The fact that 
yEsop's Fables can be traced back to In- 
dia, that fables are mentioned in the Old 
Testament and in the history of Rome as 
early as the sixth century B. C. ; further, 
that similar poetical productions of an in- 
dependent growth have been discovered in 
the tales of Uncle Remus among the ne- 
groes of the United States, and in the an- 
imal stories of the natives of America, Af- 
rica, and Oceanica, is sufficient evidence not 
only of the fact that they must be a very an- 
cient and venerable heirloom of ancestral 
wisdom, but also of their popularity and 
usefulness as a means of instruction. 

Carlyle speaks of the animal fable as ''a 
true world's book which through centuries 
was everywhere at home, the spirit of which 
diffused itself into all languages and all 
minds, . . . the universal household pos- 
session and secular Bible." 



THE USE OF MONEY 

Money is an important factor in the 
world of the adult, and children, who are so 
keen in their observation, will as a rule no- 
tice the fact at a tender age. The time 
comes when they introduce its use into their 
play, and it is not an uncommon occurrence 
that they manufacture a monetary system 
of their own for shopping and bartering, 
for banking and making investments to bear 
interest or bring returns. I have seen chil- 
dren do so on their own account without any 
instruction, and it seems that such tenden- 
cies deserve encouragement, for the notion 
of money should not be left out in the nur- 
sery. Children will instinctively anticipate 
the conditions of the life that is in store for 
them and their plays are and ought to be an 
education. 

Games are in the market which have been 
invented to familiarize children with 

34 



THE USE OF MONEY. 35 

money, but I do not remember any one that 
would deserve recommendation. Nor would 
I advise the use of artificial money such as 
accompanies these games for it is much bet- 
ter if the children themselves manufacture 
the money which they need for their own 
games. They can easily limit the amount by 
having every piece of currency .signed by all 
members of their little community and they 
may start with an equal amount allotted to 
every one, and have them backed up by real 
things that possess to them a value of ex- 
change, such as marbles, beans, or other de- 
sirable objects. Here, as in all other cases, 
parents should allow their children to in- 
vent their own methods. When the chil- 
dren come more and more into contact with 
the domain that lies beyond the pale of the 
nursery they begin to feel the need of real 
money and it will be wise to let them have 
a definite allowance so as to accustom them 
to the use of money and establish in their 
minds at an early age habits of thrift and 
order. 
There are two opinions prevalent con- 



36 OUR CHILDREN. 

cerning money both of whidi are wrong, 
and it is important for man to have the 
right conception of the significance of money 
before he starts in life. Some hold money 
in contempt and look upon it as the thing 
which defiles, while others worship it as the 
golden calf, the measure of all values and 
the power that governs the world. 

William Matthews in his well known 
book. Getting on in the World, says rightly : 

"The philosophy which affects to teach 
us a contempt of money does not run very 
deep ; ' ' and 

"The way in which a man spends his 
money is often one of the surest tests of his 
character. ' ' 

Money is neither the sordid thing which it 
is often believed to be, nor is it the omnipo- 
tent ruler of all earthly affairs. Money be- 
comes sordid only by the touch of sordid 
hands; in itself, all money is honest, for it 
represents a certain amount of human la- 
bor, equal to the exertion of procuring it. 
Nor is money the almighty power that rules 
the world; the worth of money consists in 



THE USE OF MONEY. 37 

what it may buy, but there are goods that 
can not be bought with money, — health and 
youth, beauty and energy, talents, genius, 
ideals, and more than all, honesty and a 
clear conscience. 

Money has been compared to the blood 
that circulates through our arteries. It 
must circulate to be useful and it must serve 
wholesome purposes. It is a means to an 
end and as such it must be appreciated. 
Money has no value in itself and for itself. 
To earn money for the sake of hoarding it 
may be useful for the community, for large 
capitalists are as much needed in a social 
aggregate as a living organism needs cen- 
tral organs for its blood circulation, but the 
man who hoards will find the work neither 
profitable nor pleasant. 

Between the two extremes of a wrong 
usage of money lies the golden mean and 
our children ought to know it. They ought 
to know that it is the duty of every man to 
earn a living, and a living that is merely 
from hand to mouth is insufficient for a man 
of providence, and Robert Burns is right in 



38 OUR CHILDREN. 

pointing out in one of his poems that the 
proper use of money is 

*'Not for to hide it in a hedge 

Nor for a train attendant, 
But for the glorious privilege, 

Of being independent." 

The best method of accustoming children 
to the use of money is to put them in a 
small scale in such a position as they will 
occupy later on in life when confronted by 
the cares of making a living. Allow them 
to bear in a small degree the burden of life 
by giving them an allowance for which they 
have to procure certain necessities of their 
life, their shoes, their ties, gloves, school 
utensils, car fare or other things occasion- 
ally needed ; and arrange it so that they can 
freely cover their expenses, and, if they are 
thrifty, save a little for themselves which 
they may use as they see fit. This allowance 
should not be irregularly increased but 
should be paid out like a salary on regular 
pay days, and it should be made on the 
condition that a strict account of it is kept 
which must from time to time be balanced. 



THE USE OF MONEY. 39 

It will not be wise to interfere with chil- 
dren for the unwise use they might make of 
their savings, though it may be opportune 
to point out to them the folly of unnecessary 
expenses, and unless there are weighty rea- 
sons to the contrary there ought to be no 
prying supervision of their account books, 
the main object in view being, that childi'en 
learn to make both ends meet. 

It will be good, too, if children begin 
young to earn money, but this ought not to 
be done at the expense of their education 
nor in any way that would practically 
amount to begging, but in actually accom- 
plishing some useful work that possesses a 
value to the party who pays for it. And 
the money earned or saved, if not immedi- 
ately used, should be deposited in a kind of 
savings bank, which the parents will keep 
for their children or as soon as it be large 
enough may be deposited in a real bank. 

No child is so poor and none so rich that 
he does not stand in need of some practical 
instruction in handling money, in saving it, 
and in spending it in the right way. 



SQUARE DEALING 

There is an innate desire among people to 
get something for nothing, or to gain by a 
reduction of prices. On this principle those 
merchants base their business who announce 
that they are enabled by bankruptcy or 
otherwise to sell under the manufacturing 
price. While I do not deny that this is 
sometimes possible, there is no question that 
some of the goods bought in this way rep- 
resent a smaller return for the money paid 
than the reduction promises. The man who 
buys well-made goods at an exorbitant price 
loses money, but he owns the goods. He 
has what he wanted. But he who buys poor 
goods at a reduced price loses both money 
and goods, for he gave away the former, and 
the latter are without value and will either 
be useless or will not serve the purpose for 
which they were bought. 

The fact that cheap goods are ^'made to 

40 



SQUARE DEALING. 41 

sell" is admirably set forth in Dr. John 
Wolcott 's humorous poem The Razor Seller, 
which I quote: 

A fellow in a market-town, 

Most musical, cried razors up and down, 

And offered twelve for eighteen pence; 
Which certainly seemed wondrous cheap. 
And, for the money, quite a heap. 

As every man would buy, with cash and 
sense. 

A country bumpkin the great offer heard, — 
Poor Hodge, who suffered by a broad black 
beard, 
That seemed a shoe-brush stuck beneath 
his nose: 
With cheerfulness the eighteen pence he paid. 
And proudly to himself in whispers said, 
''This rascal stole the razors, I suppose. 

''No matter if the fellow he a knave, 
Provided that the razors shave; 

It certainly will be a monstrous prize." 
So home the clown, with his good fortune, 

went. 
Smiling, in heart and soul content. 
And quickly soaped himself to ears and 
eyes. 



42 OUR CHILDREN. 

Being well lathered from a dish or tub, 
Hodge now began with grinning pain to grub, 

Just like a hedger cutting furze; 
'Twas a vile razor ! — then the rest he tried, — 
All were impostors. "Ah!" Hodge sighed, 

"I wish my eighteen pence within my 
purse." 

In vain to chase his beard,, and bring the 
graces. 
He cut, and dug, and winced, and stamped, 
and swore; 
Brought blood, and danced, blasphemed, and 
made wry faces. 
And cursed each razor's body o'er and o'er: 

His muzzle formed of opposition stuff. 
Firm as a Foxite, would not lose its ruff; 

So kept it, — laughing at the steel and suds. 
Hodge, in a passion, stretched his angry jaws. 
Vowing the direst vengeance with clenched 
claws. 

On the vile cheat that sold the goods. 
''Eazors! a mean, confounded dog. 
Not fit to scrape a hog ! ' ' 

Hodge sought the fellow, — found him, — and 

begun : 
''Perhaps, Master Razor-rogue, to you 'tis 

fun, 



SQUARE DEALING. 43 

That people flay themselves out of their 
lives. 
You rascal ! for an hour have I been grubbing, 
Giving my crying whiskers here a scrubbing, 

With razors just like oyster knives. 
Sirrah! I tell you you're a knave, 
To cry up razors that can't shave!" 

''Friend," quoth the razor man, ''I'm not a 
knave, 
As for the razors you have bought, 
Upon my soul, I never thought 
That they would shave." 
"Not think they'd shave!" quoth Hodge, with 
wondering eyes, 
And voice not much unlike an Indian yell ; 
"What were they made for, then, you dog?" 
he cries. 
''Made" quoth the fellow with a smile, — 
"to sell" 

It is sad, but nevertheless true, that most 
people who are cheated in life are deceived 
by their own desire to deceive. For in- 
stance, there is a trick among gamblers, 
which rarely fails among the uninitiated. 
The gambler who plays puts down three 
cards and requests those present to bet on 
one of them. While jDutting down the cards, 



44 OUR CHILDREN. 

there is a disturbance somewhere behind the 
gambler, and he indignantly turns round, 
requesting the people to be quiet, and this 
moment of his apparent inattention is 
utilized by a bystander who lifts up one of 
the cards, shows it to some others, and puts 
it down again. It is done quickly enough 
not to be noticeable to the gambler. But 
woe to him who imagines that on the 
strength of this deception he can risk his 
money on the exposed card. For, when the 
card is turned up it proves to be different 
from the one he has seen. The man who 
lifts up and shows the card belongs to the 
gang; he is an adept in sleight of hand and 
before he puts the card down again he re- 
places it b}^ another one. There are always 
plenty of people who, if they but have a 
chance to deceive their fellowmen, venture 
to do so, and thus they are gulled by their 
own evil desires and have no reason to com- 
plain about it. 

The bait which will catch the unwary with 
the greatest ease is flattery. Vain people 
are most easily inveigled and defrauded by 



SQUARE DEALING. 45 

praise, or by propositions that appeal to a 
sense of their own importance, or fame, or 
ability. The fable of the fox and the crow 
repeats itself more frequently than any 
other allegorical story, and it is worth while 
to have our childi'en learn it by heart so 
that they will remember the lesson. 

Let us teach children at an early age and 
as soon as they can comprehend it, not by 
moralizing, but by practical instances such 
as they observe in their surroundings, that 
the employment of tricks never pays; and 
that they should look with suspicion on 
every one who invites them to gain by an- 
other's loss or by deception. To gain by 
cheating others is always a doubtful advan- 
tage, and therefore, as a mere matter of 
prudence, it should not be practised. In 
fact, one must become a professional trick- 
ster, or gambler, in order' to succeed in the 
profession of cheating. A bird that is 
caught tightens the noose by its own move- 
ments. So a country clown, when victi- 
mized by a gang of tricksters, as a rule him- 
self closes the snare into which he falls. 



SYMPATHY WITH ANIMALS 

It is well to impress children at an early 
age with the truth that animals are sentient 
creatures as we are. It is not necessary to 
make children sentimental or to avoid tell- 
ing them that^^nimals are used for meat; 
but they should not witness such scenes as 
the slaughter of chickens, or pigs, or other 
creatures. Our Western civilization is in 
many respects, and, indeed, in its most im- 
portant features, superior to all other civili- 
zations, but it is inferior to Hindu habits, in 
so far as it has no proper sympathy with 
animal life. I read, for instance, in an 
otherwise good book, the title of which is 
The American Boy's Handy Book, on page 
386, the following passage: 

*'Mr. Fred Holder, the celebrated naturalist 
and writer of boys' books on natural history, is 
responsible for 'the goose fisherman,' which is 
nothing more nor less than a live goose, with 

46 



SYMPATHY WITH ANIMALS. 47 

a line and spoon-hook attached to one leg. Mr. 
or Mrs. Goose is driven into the water and 
forced to swim, which, owing to the nature of 
the bird, is not a difficult or disagreeable task. 

*'As the bird swims, using its feet as paddles 
to propel itself, the spoon at the head of the line 
is jerked along in a most interesting manner to 
the fish, and if there are any pickerel, with their 
voracious appetites to spur them on, they can- 
not often restrain themselves, but needs must 
seize what, to them, appears to be a fat, shiny, 
young fish, but which they learn to their sorrow 
to be a hard metal snare. 

"Then the fun begins. The goose feels 
something tugging at its leg, and becomes ex- 
cited. The unfortunate fish plunges about, only 
to drive the cruel barbs deeper into its car- 
tilaginous mouth, and make escape impossible. 

** Finding, as it supposes, a hidden enemy in 
the water, the bird, seeks refuge on the shore, 
where its master gleefully unhooks the fish, and 
starts the bird on another trip." 

What a barbarous game! Can there be 
any better mode of teaching boys cruelty? 
And what will be the result of an education 
in which the distress of a goose is thought 
to be exciting fun? The game is not so 
cruel as many other sports, but it is cer- 



48 OUR CHILDREN. 

tainly calculated to harden a boy's heart to 
the sufferings of helpless animals. Hunt- 
ing and fishing are good out-door exercises, 
but they can be tolerated only on the con- 
dition that the mind shall not dwell on the 
havoc which is caused in animal life. The 
sole inducement to hunting and fishing 
ought to consist m the exercise it affords, 
and perhaps also in the difficulties which the 
pursuit of the game offers. 

I, for one, cannot understand how a man 
can shoot at a deer that does not run away 
but confidently and boldly faces the hunter. 
That hunting and fishing are sports is a 
mark of barbarism. They ought to be 
simply a business, engaged in on account 
of the necessity of killing a certain num- 
ber of animals either for food, or because 
of the danger of their becoming a plague to 
the country, as in the case of the rabbits in 
California, which have to be killed because 
they destroy the harvest, and because their 
rapid increase makes it a question whether 
they or man shall inhabit the country. 

A disinclination to regard hunting as a 



SYMPATHY WITH ANIMALS. 49 

noble sport may appear sentimental; but I 
am happy to say tliat a man who, if he 
lacked any virtue, lacked in sentimentality, 
cherished the same opinion. Frederick the 
Great, who is unexcelled in the history of 
mankind, as a warrior and general, had a 
great contempt for hunting, and declared 
that there was as little enjojnuent in killing 
deer as there was in butchering calves. But 
Frederick was an exception on the throne, 
for hunting has always been, and is still, a 
royal sport, and the slaughter of game by 
many sovereigns is looked upon as a very 
important practice in their lives. 

The only hunting worthy of man is the 
lion or tiger hunt, which is heroic and means 
salvation of life by the destruction of those 
creatures that are destructive to it. But 
most of the hunting that is actually done is 
little better than mere slaughter, the worst 
sport being coursing, for which the animals 
are first caught and are then let loose for 
the purpose of being hunted to death. 



DON'T SAY DON'T 

There are two interpretations of the 
doctrine of the Fall and the scheme of sal- 
vation that was held among the school men 
of mediaeval Christianity. One regards the 
fall of man as a break in God's plan, while 
the other one represents the view that it was 
God's intention to let man pass through sin 
to salvation; for without sin man would 
never have acquired the knowledge of good 
and evil, which forms the climax of his simi- 
larity to God. Adherents of the former 
view belonged to the school of Nominalists 
while the latter showed an inclination 
toward Realism. The former regarded our 
present world as one particular anomalous 
accident, and would at the same time insist 
on the dogma of the cosmocentricity of the 
earth, which means that the earth is the 
stage on which alone God became flesh and 
revealed himself in Christ. All the other 

50 



DON'T SAY "DON'T." 51 

planets, the sun and the moon, and all the 
fixed stars, exist simply for the sake of the 
earth as lights that might serve to make 
time-measurements for human purposes. 
On earth man was created to be tempted, 
and when he had fallen God would set all 
the armies of angels in motion and come 
down upon earth himself to redeem him 
from perdition. This is the view of those 
who regard every experience of theirs as a 
particular case, and who see in universals 
no truly universal features but mere 
''names" (in Latin nomina), a definition 
from which the name "nominalism" has 
been derived. Their adversaries, the Keal- 
ists, were inclined to look upon every par- 
ticular case as an instance of universal law, 
and thus they were inclined to regard man's 
fall not as an accident, but as a necessity. 
They argued that man fell because God 
wanted him to fall. And how could the 
good tidings of the God-man have been pos- 
sible if man had not to rise from a lower 
state to a higher, if he had been and re- 
mained from the beginning perfect and 



52 OUR CHILDREN. 

without sin? How could there have been 
any worth in his character if he simply were 
good because he was created good? No, 
man had to work out his salvation for him- 
self, he had to establish his own good char- 
acter, and that feature in man which ac- 
complished his salvation is God himself! 
Thus, according to the philosophy of the 
Realists, the earth would be a typical case 
for any possible world on which life de- 
velops, and the consistent conclusion would 
be to say that the same events naturally and 
necessarily take place in other worlds. On 
all of them we should find sinners, on all 
of them error and evil, yet at the same time 
on all of them God would appear in the 
flesh and would teach men that self-sacri- 
ficing love is the way of salvation. And 
further, what would Christ or Saviour mean 
but an actualization of this self-sacrificing 
love? 

Whatever these two schools may pretend, 
this much is sure: when, according to the 
legend told in the first chapter of Genesis, 
the Lord put the man he had created in the 



DON'T SAY "DON'T." 53 

Garden of Eden, and said to him with re- 
gard to the tree of the knowledge of good 
and evil, "Thou shalt not eat of it," the 
man, as soon as left at liberty to do as he 
pleased, would not and could not fail to 
disobey the command. 

As the story stands God must have had 
the intention to make man fall. Otherwise 
the Ophites, the Syrian Gnostics who be- 
lieved in the divinity of the serpent, would 
have been right when they declared that 
Yahveh was an inferior God, who, himself 
a slave of passions, like wrath, jealousy, 
vengeance, etc., wanted to keep man igno- 
rant. The highest God, however, the God of 
love, mercy, and wisdom, sent the serpent as 
the first messenger of the gnosis to aspire 
for knowledge and prepare mankind for the 
arrival of Christ. 

If you wish a child to perform a certain 
act on its own accord, and not at your re- 
quest, you need only tell him "Do not do 
it, ' ' and he will be sure to do it. You may 
by force or by fear prevent a boy from be- 
ing disobedient, but you cannot prevent him 



54 OUR CHILDREN. 

from feeling the itching in his fingers to do 
what is forbidden. All the various injunc- 
tions so freely given to children are so many 
temptations to become disobedient. 

A little party of children had thrown sev- 
eral boxes of blocks down stairs, which 
would have given the nurse a good deal of 
trouble to pick up. They enjoyed the joke 
greatly, but when a w^aggish uncle told them 
that for a punishment the blocks should re- 
main down stairs and that no one should be 
allowed to bring them up again, the little 
urchins started at once to carry every block 
up, and the joy of being disobedient beamed 
in their eyes. 

Hence the lesson. Don't say ''don't" to 
your children. Do not forbid. Do not 
lead them into the temptation to become dis- 
obedient; in other words, respect their lib- 
erty and allow them to act foolishly, if they 
prefer to do so at their own risk. 

But the objection may be made: "Chil- 
dren must be educated, and education con- 
sists precisely in teaching them what not 
to do." That is quite true. But the 



DON'T SAY "DON'T." 55 

method of teaching them what they should 
not do ought not to consist in prohibitions. 

If you do not want the baby to walk down 
stairs because he will hurt himself and is 
liable to fall, let him try, and let him by 
his own experience find that he runs a risk 
when going down. Tell him he will fall, 
but do not forbid him: Don't say "don't." 
When approaching the stairs for the first 
time, watch over him so that he does not 
do himself serious harm, but let him experi- 
ence the fear of falling, and warn him that 
he will hurt himself. If he disregards the 
warning, it is better for him to be suffi- 
ciently frightened by a fall to remember it. 

If a child approaches the stove or the fire- 
place, warn him in the same way; tell him 
"hot," "hot," and if the child does not 
mind, let him burn himself a little. The 
nurse's business is simply to see to it that 
he does not meet with a serious accident, 
not to hinder him from making unpleasant 
but valuable experiences. You will find 
that children who are informed about the 
evil consequences of certain actions will 



56 OUR CHILDREN. 

mind the warning much better than the chil- 
dren who are forbidden to eat an apple for 
no reason whatever. That apple will ap- 
pear "jDleasant to the sight and good for 
food," more so than any other fruit that 
may be around. 

When children want more sweetmeats, 
more strawberry shortcake, or more ice 
cream than is good for them, give them a 
fair warning. Tell them, ''I should like to 
eat more of it myself, but I believe I shall 
ruin my stomach and be sick if I do ; there- 
fore I don't." If the children are strong 
enough and can stand a disordered stomach, 
it may be advisable to let them once or twice 
take more and let them find out themselves 
what an abused stomach means. But when 
a child falls sick and when its stomach re- 
volts, the best plan is to sit by his bedside 
and help him pass in review all the things 
he has eaten on the previous day, and then 
to say to him without reproach: ''I believe 
you ate too much ice cream," or whatever 
it may have been, ''and I would not eat so 
much again. It is mipleasant to be sick, 



DON'T SAY "DON'T." 57 

and it is after all the same taste whether 
you eat one or two dishes." 

Sickness is a good teacher of self-control 
in eating, but parents must improve the oc- 
casion and help the child to discover the 
cause of its indisposition. 

You cannot educate children by pun- 
ishments. You must make them, so far as 
possible, feel the evil results of their actions, 
and the insight into the causation of good 
and evil will exercise a better and more edu- 
cational influence than the fear of the rod 
or the sting of bitter reproaches. 

The child wdll be an echo of your own 
behavior. Scolding makes him a scold and 
severity renders him resentful. 



TREATMENT OF A NAUGHTY CHILD 

There is a peculiar difficulty in treating 
children when they become naughty. They 
scream, they howl, and become obstinate to 
all moralizing. Their bad temper becomes 
part of themselves, and to relent naturally 
appears to them a self -surrender. 

What is to be done in such a case 1 Shall 
educators break the will of the child as is 
often proposed, or shall they yield and let 
him have his will? Neither seems to be 
practical, for, on the one hand, instead of 
breaking the will we ought to strengthen it, 
and, on the other hand, instead of yielding 
to his will, we ought to lead it and direct it 
in its tendencies. Will in itself is neither 
good nor bad ; and strength of will is rather 
a virtue than a vice, but the goodness of a 
will depends on the aim toward which it 
tends. 

A child's soul, accordingly, should be 

58 



A NAUGHTY CHILD. 59 

treated as what it naturally is, a living com- 
monwealth of various and frequently con- 
tradictory tendencies. And in doing so, it 
is advisable to identify those tendencies 
that are to be cherished and strengthened 
with the child's self, but to brand those 
which we wish to remove as foreign ele- 
ments that are to be discarded. They are 
like the injurious offshoots of fruit trees 
which have to be pruned. If the naughti- 
ness of the child be treated as something 
that he is possessed of, as a mental poison 
that he has to expel from his mental system, 
as demons and devils such as Jesus cast out 
according to the Gospel stories, — educators 
will far more easily regain the good-will 
of their little rebel if they allow him to 
capitulate without suffering a humiliation. 
Here a combination of two principles ap- 
pears to be of advantage: first, the divert- 
ing of the attention of the child from the 
cause that produced his ill behavior, and 
secondly, the personifying his rudeness with 
a bad boy that has entered his little self. 
Address the child, saying: " There is a bad 



60 OUR CHILDREN. 

little boy in you, come quick, let us cast 
him out," and then begin a chase after the 
imagined bad boy. The pursuit will give 
joy to the child who will soon understand 
the joke and with shining eyes delightedly 
help to expel the little devil whom he learns 
to consider as the cause of his bad behavior. 

Afterwards he will learn no longer to ad- 
mit the bad boy, but to expel him before he 
is able to do any mischief. At any rate he 
will be able to distinguish between himself 
and the evil that might originate in him, 
and will thus preserve his self-esteem and 
there will be no need of breaking his will 
in the interest of good behavior. 

The methods of casting out bad boys may 
be changed as physicians may employ vari- 
ous medicines for attaining the same eif ect. 
Sometimes it is advisable to pull out the 
bad boy as the dentist might pull a tooth, 
which may be done with a corkscrew after 
the manner of uncorking a bottle. Another 
practical method which can be highly rec- 
ommended is the employment of pincers. 
The little fellow must open his mouth for 



A NAUGHTY CHILD. 61 

inspection, for the bad boy is supposed to 
sit inside, in the place whence the shrieks 
proceed. The opening of the mouth will of 
course stop further crying, and now you 
can give some information about the little 
shrieking imp inside who must be caught 
with the pincers. " Keep still," you tell 
the child, " I'll catch him with the pincers 
and take him out ; and then you will be our 
good boy again ! ' ' From a quite varied ex- 
perience in these experiments, I found that 
the method works well and the child enters 
into this theatrical performance of a mod- 
ernized exorcism with great readiness. He 
accustoms himself to speak of the prior 
naughtiness as something foreign to his bet- 
ter self and will easily understand the de- 
sirability of ridding himself of bad and un- 
worthy qualities, of anger, malevolence, 
envy, and other passions or vices. 

A similar method is applicable when chil- 
di^en, as they frequently will do, hurt them- 
selves and begin to cry. If the pain is not 
serious and will pass away as soon as their 
attention is called to something else, a good 



62 OUR CHILDREN. 

plan is to post them at one end of the hall, 
or at one corner of the table, fasten the pain 
with fictitious nails to the spot where they 
stand and then bid them run away. In 
speeding along the hall or running round 
the table, they will quickly overcome their 
trouble. The activity of running works up 
an increased circulation and it will not be 
long before they forget their pain. 

Under no circumstances does it seem ad- 
visable to pity children or to join in their 
complaints, even though they may be justi- 
fied. Commiseration makes a child dissat- 
isfied and you can bring the happiest child 
to tears simply by pitying it for anything, 
however ridiculous your compassion may be. 

Do not show anxiety, for thereby you 
make the child anxious. Do not show any 
worry about his bad habits, for thus he will 
be worried himself and you weaken his char- 
acter. Show a simple and straightforward 
determination to help the child to discard 
what is undesirable in the makeup of his 
soul, and he will naturally acquire the habit 
of ridding himself of the petty vices of 



A NAUGHTY CHILD. 63 

childhood before they can harden into 
habits. 

All these methods can be intensified by a 
review of the past in calm hours. The fath- 
er and the mother must be the child's most 
intimate friends and counselors. They 
ought to tell him when they are alone with 
him, what they themselves think of this or 
that naughtiness; what other people think 
of it; what will be the consequences; ask 
him how he would like the same behavior in 
others ; and finally tell him how to mend the 
fault and how to avoid it in the future. 
There should be no scolding at such a mo- 
ment, for that would disturb the calmness 
of the child's mind. In order to render 
this instruction effective, not for the mo- 
ment only, but for the child's whole life, it 
should be a lesson of self-contemplation and 
a calm self-criticism. 

When the child grows older, he should 
gradually acquire the habit of exercising 
this self-criticism for himself ; and here it is 
advisable to call the child's early attention 
to the dangers of vanity. 



STIMULATE SELF-CRITICISM 

While strength of will is a virtue, vanity 
is a vice. Vanity is the most dangerous 
demon that can take hold of us, for vanity 
renders self-criticism impossible. 

Every child will be able to grasp the im- 
portance and paramount usefulness of self- 
criticism. Only tell him the story of a man 
who always blamed others when he did some 
foolish thing, and who, adhering to the be- 
lief in his own perfection, remained a fool 
all his lifetime. He gathered a rich store 
of bad experiences and came finally to the 
conclusion that the whole world was wrong, 
— but the world thought all the while there 
was something wrong with him. On the 
other hand, illustrate by the examples of 
great men, that great successes are never 
gained without a stern self-criticism. Self- 
complacency may create a very happy dis- 
position, but this happiness will not be aus- 

64 



STIMULATE SELF-CRITICISM. 65 

picious; it will be the happiness of lucky 
Hans who joyfully exchanges his gold for 
a horse, his horse for a cow, his cow for a 
pig, his pig for a goose, his goose for a 
grindstone, and when the grindstone drops 
into a well, glories in his having so fortu- 
nately got rid of his burden. The way to 
success in life is the very opposite to self- 
complacency and is incompatible with van- 
ity. When the foolish man complains about 
the wrongs of others, the wise man, when- 
ever ill fate befalls him, inquires first into 
the origin of his own mistakes. So, for in- 
stance, when he is cheated, he does not glory 
in his own honesty and blame only the ras- 
cal who cheated him. He blames instead, 
his own credulity and his lack of experience 
not to have seen through the schemes by 
which he has been caught. 

Remember that the net in which most peo- 
ple are caught is their own vanity. La 
Fontaine tells the instructive fable of the 
raven and the fox and adds that the raven, 
seeing his own foolishness, vowed that he 
would never be caught again. But the 



66 OUR CHILDREN. 

probability is that a vain fellow would not 
have blamed himself ; he would have scolded 
about the untrustworthiness of people and 
the frauds of foxes, but would have again 
fallen an easy prey to the next flatterer who 
approached him in the same or a similar 
manner. None of the animals in Reynard 
the Fox blames himself, but all denounce 
the fox's villainy. 

What appears to us a misfortune is fre- 
quently the result of a bad quality in our 
character. Gamblers are in the habit of 
catching their victims by first giving them 
a chance to cheat; tricky agents make you 
believe that they sell under price; dishon- 
est lawyers give you a chance to make a con- 
tract in which you believe that you cheat 
some one else, while in fact you are being 
cheated. 

Considering the truth that our own petty 
vices are the greatest dangers of our life, 
we must early teach children to regard them 
as foreign elements which they should cast 
off, through self-criticism and a rigorous 
self -discipline. 



DO NOT PUNISH 

Since the days of barbarism a constant 
change in the treatment of punishment has 
been going on in civilized countries. The 
old method was a system of retaliation. 
Punishment is revenge. The new method 
which replaces punishment by correction 
may be called, briefly, a system of education. 
The turning point in the evolutionary curve 
of mankind is of a religious nature. It ap- 
pears first as goodwill toward all, the good 
and the bad alike, and in the history of the 
East in Buddha's teaching, it is based on the 
consideration that all creatures, both good 
and evil, are the product of circumstances, 
and that therefore the bad deserve compas- 
sion, not hatred. If a man's character is 
conditioned by his past, by the circumstances 
under which he was developed, there is no 
longer any sense in expecting that he should 
act differently from what he does according 

67 



68 OUR CHILDREN. 

to his nature. Every creature is as its own 
life history, since the beginning of life on 
earth, has formed it; and as it is, so it will 
act. There is no cause for becoming excited 
about criminal actions. We must imder- 
stand them, we must above all investigate 
their motives, and must treat them in the 
same way as a physician treats a disease. 
That society, or the government, or the 
judge, should commit a crime on the crim- 
inal because the criminal has committed a 
crime on society, is as ridiculous as it would 
be to inflict upon the stomach a stomach- 
ache because by its indigestion it has pro- 
duced a head-ache or otherwise injured the 
fellow-limbs of its organism. Retaliation is 
a continuation of moral disease, not a cure, 
and what we need is a cure. Taking this 
ground, Buddha abolished in the realm of 
religion the idea of hatred and revenge by 
saying that hatred is not appeased by ha- 
tred. Hatred ceases by non-hatred only. 
And in the same spirit Christ taught in the 
Sermon on the Mount (Matt. v. 38-39), say- 
ing: 



DO NOT PUNISH. 69 

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye 
for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth : But I say 
unto you, That ye resist not evil." 

We need not discuss theology in this place, 
and do not care in this connection whether 
Christ 's doctrine was really an absolute non- 
resistance of evil, as is maintained in this 
and the following sentences. We only point 
out the truth of the sentiment which 
prompted these sayings and which should 
be expressed in the sentence: "Resist not 
evil with evil." Evil must be resisted; but 
we must not retaliate. Instead of demand- 
ing a tooth for a tooth, and giving a lie for 
a lie, we must overcome a lie by truth, wrong 
by right, and violence by patience. This 
ideal of Buddhism and of Christianity has 
not been introduced into our law books, but 
is an ideal which mankind in its further 
progress of evolution is endeavoring to 
actualize. Justice during the Middle Ages 
was to a great extent an administration of 
retaliating punishments. Criminals con- 
demned to die were pinched with red hot 
tongs, their limbs were broken on the wheel, 



70 OUR CHILDREN. 

they were burned alive, and all kinds of 
cruel tortures were cunningly invented to 
make the death of the criminal as painful 
as possible. 

All this has changed. Capital punish- 
ment, above all, has ceased to be a retali- 
ation, and has become more and more a mere 
protection against the repetition of a crime. 
As it w^ould be wrong to leave a tiger abroad, 
so a man, who by his very nature is a mur- 
derer, should not be allowed to remain at 
liberty, and since imprisonment is on the one 
hand not a sufficient guarantee for the safety 
of society, and on the other hand a more 
cruel treatment than death, capital punish- 
ment is, so far as our civilization goes, still 
a necessity of our penal law. Yet the at- 
tempt is no longer made to retaliate on the 
murderer the cruelties which he has commit- 
ted. It is a maxim which has never been 
explicitly introduced by law, but which is 
nevertheless firmly established in all civil- 
ized countries, that the death punishment 
should be inflicted with as little pain as pos- 
sible. The criminal is simply no longer al- 



DO NOT PUNISH. 71 

lowed to live, and capital punishment has 
ceased to be a revenge or retaliation. It 
has become a cure based upon the experience 
that the man who commits a murder is liable 
to commit another murder. Hence a mur- 
derer who has killed a man not on account 
of his murderous inclination, but through 
an unhappy complication of circumstances, 
be it in defence of his honor, or for some 
other reason which is regarded as a sufficient 
explanation of an unusual and justifiable 
wrath, will not be treated as a habitual mur- 
derer, and according to the laws of all civil- 
ized countries, is not punishable by death. 

Our penal laws are not as yet fully 
adapted to the new view. All the minor 
punishments are still based upon the plan 
of retaliation which makes our prisons and 
penitentiaries breeding-places of crime in- 
stead of what they ought to be, moral hos- 
pitals. There is no question, however, that 
the more rational treatment of the criminal 
will in time be brought about. The result 
will as surely take place as the religious con- 
siderations of justice towards our fallen fel- 



72 OUR CHILDREN. 

lowmen and a scientific consideration of 
crime as a moral disease will in the long run 
change our methods in education as well as 
in the administration of justice. 

I do not wish to be misunderstood. My 
advocacy of an abolition of punishment as 
punishment should not be interpreted as due 
to that maudlin sympathy with criminals 
which is often met with among sentimental 
people. The criminal behind the bars ought 
not to be pampered, but should receive 
prison diet and prison treatment as in ac- 
cordance with the regulations of the place 
where his own deeds have landed him. It is 
part of the cure. The execution of a mur- 
derer is merely the removal of a dangerous 
member of society, for the same reason that 
a limb of the body infected by blood poison- 
ing must be amputated. 

What our courts of justice ought to be 
and ought to become, parents must realize 
on a smaller scale in the education of their 
children. There ought to be no punishment 
of children in the old and proper sense of 
punishment. Punishment, if we are per- 



DO NOT PUNISH. 73 

mitted to use the old word in a more general 
sense, ought to become a method of educa- 
tion, an^ ought to cease inflicting pain with- 
out any ulterior purpose. Punishment 
ought to be nothing but the consequences 
of a wrong act which is brought home to the 
knowledge and sentiments of the child. As 
a rule, parents do just the reverse. They 
make the children escape the evil conse- 
quences of wrong doing, and let them feel a 
punislunent, the reason of which must nat- 
urally appear as the expression of wrath or 
ill-will. If a child breaks things, it ought, 
if possible, be made to feel the loss of the 
broken thing. Suppose he has broken his 
own glass, then it should not be replaced at 
once by a new one. If it is the glass of his 
brother or sister, he ought to give up his 
own to replace the loss, and if possible some 
arrangement should be made to let the harm 
that he has caused fall, at least in part, upon 
himself. 

There is perhaps no harm for parents to 
show anger if children become very mis- 
chievous, but the anger should be felt by 



74 OUK CHILDREN. 

the child to be the direct result of his ac- 
tion. 

There is a rule propounded by educators 
never to punish in a state of anger, and the 
rule is good. But it is insufficient, in so far 
as the child ought to feel the anger of his 
parents as the result of his own deeds more 
than the punishment itself. It may be ad- 
visable even to simulate anger so as to im- 
press the child's mind with the danger of 
losing his parents' affection. The child 
ought to learn what deeds are productive 
of wrath, and this should be made a means 
(one of the means only) of learning to 
avoid them. Otherwise, if parents would 
not resent mischievous acts, when the child 
later on becomes acquainted with other peo- 
ple, he would be very much disappointed in 
the world, for no one else would exhibit the 
same patience. 

The proper punishment would be to let a 
child feel the full result of wrong and un- 
wise deeds. If once in a while you allow a 
child to eat his fill of sweets and become sick, 
and remind him when sick that his sickness 



DO NOT PUNISH. 75 

is of his own doing, you apply a natural 
punishment, which without makmg him ob- 
stinate wall cure him of a bad habit. 

It is sometimes a risk to give too much 
liberty to children, but it is better to take 
the risk and watch the results than to make 
them fear the rod which can only produce a 
sneaking and hypocritical character. 

When our children have grown up we can 
punish them no longer and must then, at 
any rate, leave them to themselves. If they 
have not become inured to the bracing air 
of liberty while young, they will never ac- 
quire the independence needed at an adult 
age. 

To educate children simply by punishment 
is not the right way of securing manly in- 
dependence. There ought to be as much lib- 
erty as possible, for by liberty alone the 
sentiment of responsibility can be insured. 



DIEECT AND DIVERT, BUT DO 
NOT SUPPRESS 

Man is by nature a creature that yearns 
for activity. All his nerves and muscles are 
storehouses freighted with energy which are 
eager to perform work. The main duty of 
education consists in directing the work, but 
not in suppressing it. Every function per- 
formed establishes a case of precedence, and 
however easy, as a rule, it may be to dig the 
first channel for the rivers of the soul, it 
is very difficult to change them as soon as 
they are firmly established in habits. 

Children that are taught to busy them- 
selves will be more manageable when they 
grow older, than children who in their ear- 
lier years are left to themselves. The age 
of early babyhood so much neglected now, 
is in fact the most important period of a 
man's whole life, and this is not less true 
because the evil consequences that result 

76 



DIRECT AND DIVERT. 77 

from mistakes made at the beginning of life, 
are the most difficult to trace. 

The child has a right to be active, and par- 
ents and nurses should see to it that when 
the little one is in good health he should al- 
ways be busy. 

Now it sometimes happens that a child 
does something that it should not do, that 
it touches things which it might break, that 
it begins to busy itself with things which 
it would better leave alone. In such cases 
it is not advisable to interfere violently by 
tearing away the thing which it should not 
handle. Educators will find it easy to divert 
the child's attention by giving it some other 
toy which for the sake of newness, or for 
some other reason, it will at once prefer. 

The policy for all cases ought to be to 
divert the attention of a child instead of rob- 
bing it by violence of any object which it 
may happen to take hold of. 

When things are taken away from the 
child, the child will naturally cry, and no 
one can blame the little fellow for it, but 
if his attention be diverted he will drop the 



78 OUR CHILDREN. 

forbidden thing voluntarily and there will 
be no crying and no naughtiness. 

Therefore, nurses should make it a rule 
never to snatch away anything from a child 
before substituting for it some other toy 
which would appear at the moment prefer- 
able to the child's mind. 

The same is true of bad as well as dan- 
gerous habits to which a child should be dis- 
accustomed. Children generally love pen- 
cils and will put them into their mouths. 
Of course they may fall and knock the point 
of the pencil right into their throat. If 
children are forbidden to put pencils into 
their mouths, they will be all the more 
anxious to do so and may develop a habit 
of doing it when unobserved, whereby an ac- 
cident is almost sure to happen. But if you 
teach the child to take the pencil lengthwise 
in the mouth, he will more readily discon- 
tinue putting in the point foremost and you 
will forestall in this way the formation of 
a dangerous habit. 

What is true of children is true generally. 
Any one who has to deal with obstinate peo- 



DIRECT AND DIVERT. 79 

pie, especially the warden of an asylum for 
the insane, will be wise never to antagonize 
passionate outbursts unless compelled to do 
so by the direst necessity. Diversion is 
easier and more effective than suppression. 
There is a story about a warden of an in- 
sane asylum who visited the institution 
of a colleague. He was admitted to the 
grounds by the janitor who knew him 
personally, and while walking in the park, 
met a gentleman who introduced himself as 
a doctor and inspector of the wards. The 
two gentlemen shook hands as colleagues 
and enjoyed a pleasant walk and talk and at 
last the visitor was shown up to a wooden 
tower which commanded a general view of 
the park and its vicinity. When the two 
reached the top, the inspector at once pro- 
posed to his guest to jump down, as that 
was his fashion with all the people whom 
he showed round through the institution. 
Now at once the visitor, to his dismay, be- 
comes aware of the fact that he is face to 
face with one of the patients, who by some 
mishap must have escaped from his keeper, 



80 OUR CHILDREN. 

and as insane people frequently do, had up 
to that time behaved in a quite sensible way. 
But now the pretended inspector began to 
show all the symptoms of an approaching at- 
tack, and the visitor looked round for a 
means of defending himself in case of ag- 
gression. Had they come to a fight on the 
narrow platform of the tower, they would 
both have fallen a considerable depth. The 
visitor, being accustomed to insane persons, 
remained calm and said quietly to his com- 
panion: ''You want me to jump down from 
this tower ? That is nothing, every one can 
do that ; but it is much more difficult to jump 
up from below. I'll show you how to do it, 
come down. ' ' The patient was startled, and 
asked, "Can you do that really?" ''Of 
course I can," was the reply, "come down 
and I '11 show you. ' ' Thus the expert alien- 
ist diverted the wild imagination of the pa- 
tient aijd led him down to a place in which 
he was no longer in danger. They had 
scarcely reached the ground when the keeper 
arrived and took charge of the fugitive. 
The lesson is obvious and the policy of the 



DIRECT AND DIVERT. 81 

clever warden can be profitably imitated in 
practical life whether in dealing with iras- 
cible adults, with mobs, or with children. 

Children should be forced to a thing as 
little as possible ; the will should be directed 
and guided, not broken. We insist that a 
broken will is a weak will, and a weak will 
more than a strong will is given to obstinacy 
— the disease to be cured by breaking the 
will. We speak of obstinate people as head- 
strong, while in fact they are weaklings in 
intellect, and educators who deem it neces- 
sary to break the wills of their charges will 
unfailingly produce the result which they 
propose to avoid. 



SANITARY ATTENTION TO 
CHILDREN 

Care for the bodily health of a child is of 
paramount importance ; but it deserves a de- 
tailed treatment and does not lie within the 
pale of the present investigation. However 
without pretending to do justice to the sub- 
ject, the author believes that he can suggest 
some advice which he has learned by ex- 
perience in his own home. 

It is a matter of course and needs scarcely 
any mention, that mothers and nurses should 
always think of their children, that they 
should attend to their physical wants at reg- 
ular hours and whenever special occasions 
may demand it — on retiring in the even- 
ing, immediately at their awakening in the 
morning, when they are restless at night, 
before and after walks. They should not 
allow the little folk to become over hungry 
nor over thirsty, and must patiently con- 

82 



SANITARY ATTENTION. 83 

tinue to remind them of attending to their 
various necessities until definite habits have 
been established. If something is wrong in 
the child's deportment, parents should be 
inclined, first of all, to blame themselves for 
lack of attention. 

As soon as children begin to eat flesh diet, 
they should become accustomed to cleaning 
their teeth, and this must be done in the 
evening, not in the morning. It is during 
the night that the teeth are affected by the 
impurities of the remnants of food which 
form a thin layer on the teeth just as a 
fatty coat will cover a plate after use at 
table. 

In olden times when man's diet was 
simple, no tooth brushes were needed; for 
the best method of keeping the teeth clean, 
more thorough and gentle than a toothbrush, 
is eating mibuttered bread of moderate dry- 
ness. It is more serviceable than the bris- 
tles of the brush. 

If the teeth have been cleaned in the even- 
ing, more than rinsing with pure water will 
not be required in the morning. To brush 



84 OUR CHILDREN. 

the teeth once a day may ordinarily be suffi- 
cient, since bristles, especially if too harsh, 
are liable to cut or wear awa}^ the enamel 
of the teeth, which is the best protection of 
the bony substance, and the slightest crack 
opens the door to the inroads of decay. 

Children that grow up under the condi- 
tions of our overcivilization are apt to suf- 
fer from bad teeth at a very early age, and 
it is wise to let a considerate dentist fill the 
cavities. In order to render this feasible, 
make it a rule never to speak of the pains 
that you yourself have suffered in a den- 
tist's chair, although you may mention the 
fact that it sometimes hurts incidentally, 
and add that no wise man cares for that, 
because a little pain saves from worse suf- 
ferings. Should you happen to go to the 
dentist, inform your children of the fact as 
if you were telling them a story that may 
interest them, and as soon as it is necessary 
for them to have their teeth attended to, 
you will find them more willing to do so, 
and they will mount the dentist 's chair with 
a good deal of satisfaction. They will even 



SANITARY ATTENTION. 85 

ask (as I know by experience) to be taken 
to the dentist, as a favor, for children love 
to imitate the doings of older folks, and I 
went so far as to threaten one of my little 
boys that I would not take him to the den- 
tist if he were not very good. I did it, of 
course, and I did it as a special favor by 
way of recompense and in recognition of 
his creditable behavior. The dentist treat- 
ed him as tenderly as possible, only once 
causing him pain, and then probably not 
much. The little fellow sat in the chair as 
proud as a man who is attending to an im- 
portant business, and he will go again if 
any one of his teeth should need treatment. 
Children are apt to have dirty hands, for 
they creep on the floor, poke in all corners, 
handle almost everything without hesita- 
tion, and gather the dust and the dirt that 
can be found anywhere. It is impossible to 
prevent it, and therefore it is necessary to 
teach them to wash their hands whenever 
they eat, not for general cleanliness only 
but for sanitary reasons, which latter the 
child will appreciate more readily. 



86 OUR CHILDREN. 

Further, children must learn not to stick 
their dirty fingers into their eyes, noses, 
mouths, and wherever the mucous mem- 
branes are accessible. The mucous mem- 
branes are not so well protected as the other 
skin of the body, and the most terrible in- 
fections can thus be introduced into the sys- 
tem, causing painful diseases, loss of eye- 
sight, and other misfortunes. It is very 
important to beware of public water closets 
and to let children know that there are 
dangers of infection. 

Before the children go to bed their hands 
must be washed. If they have clean fin- 
gers, they can rub their eyes in the morning 
without danger. 

Speaking of the eyes, I may incidentally 
mention that at birth they should be care- 
fully cleaned with a soft rag soaked in warm 
water that has been mildly disinfected. 
Perhaps more than fifty per cent, of all the 
blindness on earth is due to a neglect of this 
important measure. 

In the days of health, think of sickness, 
and the most insidious cases are diseases of 



SANITARY ATTENTION. 87 

the throat. It is therefore specially impor- 
tant to prepare children for the occasion so 
as to render a constant supervision possible. 
Take them to the window when they are 
well and make them put out their tongue 
and say Ah ! so as to show their larynx. Do 
it in a joke or play doctor, and tell them you 
will see whether their little throats are in 
good condition. If you understand at all 
how to deal with children, you will easily 
succeed, and if one child sets the example, 
the others will follow suit without giving 
any trouble. Children so trained will at 
once open their mouths and allow you to ex- 
amine their throats, which should be done 
at once whenever there is the slightest sus- 
picion of any kind of throat disease, above 
all the most terrible of them, diphtheria. 

It is a common experience of physicians 
that children do not allow their throats to 
be examined when sick and no coaxing will 
prevail upon them to change theii* mind. 
The little patient's mouth has sometimes to 
be forced open, which is very hard on a 
child, but it must be done when its life is 



88 OUR CHILDREN. 

at stake. Yet there are cases when chil- 
di'en die through being untractable. 

The dangers of throat diseases are suffi- 
ciently great to justify the prescribed meth- 
od of preparing children for such an occa- 
sion. 

As a rule throat diseases begin with colds ; 
and where the membranes are affected, in- 
fectious germs find an easy entrance. Stop 
therefore the malady in the very beginning 
and let the children use the spray of some 
mild disinfectant, for which purpose there 
are probably no better drugs than liquid 
vaseline or listerine. The latter should be 
weak enough not to be too stringent for a 
child. 

When children have a sore throat, you 
may be sure that they will refuse to take the 
spray and you must therefore train them 
for taking it readily when needed. You 
can do that simply by using sometimes the 
spray in the presence of your children, your- 
self, and it is as harmless to a healthy 
throat as it is salutary for a sore one. 
Wait till the children ask you. What are 



SANITARY ATTENTION. 89 

you doing, papa? If they should not ask 
you, announce to them that you are going 
to take a spray to-night, and they are sure 
to be anxious why you do it. Then is the 
time to explain to them that you feel a little 
sore in your throat and the spray will do 
you good. They will soon ask you to en- 
joy the spray themselves. Be careful not 
to give them too much ; that would frighten 
them and make the experiment futile. Just 
let them enjoy it so long as it is mere exer- 
cise until they get accustomed to "the 
throat-machme. ' ' 

Should a spray be needed by children be- 
fore you have accustomed them to it, you 
might carefully apply it in their sleep, 
watching the breathing and pressing the 
India rubber ball at a few successive in- 
halations. But this is a mere makeshift 
and will not be so effective as when the child 
voluntarily gives his consent to the perfor- 
mance. 

One word more about the treatment of 
the stomach of children. Here, as in many 
other cases, the best method is the golden 



90 OUR CHILDREN. 

way of leaving the children at liberty to eat 
what they please. The two extremes which 
trespass against this rule, viz., compelling 
children to eat and coaxing them, are equal- 
ly obnoxious. If children should eat a cer- 
tain kind of food, set them the example 
yourself and they will imitate you. If you 
force them to eat something that is good for 
them, the food becomes disgusting to the 
child and thereby loses some of those quali- 
ties on account of which it seems recom- 
mendable. Only in cases of extreme danger 
when a sick child objects to the food while 
on the point of starvation is there any justi- 
fication in employing force. 

By far the more common mistake is coax- 
ing, the results of which are very injurious. 
When you find a child that has no appetite 
and would never eat heartily, but merely 
nibble at this and that tidbit, and even then 
only on repeated serious entreaties of his 
mamma, you may be assured that the little 
fellow is one of the many victims of coax- 
ing. The anxious mamma will tell you that 
the child is as thin as a ghost, you can 



SANITARY ATTENTION. 91 

count his ribs, and if you do not coax him 
he will starve. The truth is, his food has 
become disgusting to him by coaxing. He 
is overfed, not underfed. 

What is to be done under this trying and 
exceptional condition 1 

The best appetizer is hunger. Try the 
starvation cure. Do not make any fuss 
with a boy of that kind, but tell him, "Very 
well ! If you do not want to eat you need not. 
I will not force you. You are at perfect 
liberty to do as you please." Take him out 
for a walk ; either do it yourself, if you are 
his father or mother, or let the nurse do it, 
or an uncle, or a friend, and when you re- 
turn, tell him that you have grown hungry 
and have a good appetite for a piece of 
bread or a roll and milk, for milk rice, for 
soup, or whatever may be on hand. Sit 
down and eat, and invite him to join you 
without, however, coaxing him. The prob- 
ability is that the child will show a better 
appetite after the first doses of the starva- 
tion cure and he will ever after like the 
food which once satisfied his hunger; for 



92 OUR CHILDREN. 

the stomach too has a memory, and appetite 
for a special dish means the stomach 's recol- 
lection that it has given it satisfaction on a 
similar occasion. 

Never give children sweets when they are 
hungry, but always substantial solid food, 
and set them whenever possible the exam- 
ple yourself by partaking of the same dish. 

Make it a rule not to show them sweets 
when they should not have them; it un- 
necessarily leads them into temptation ; and 
too many sweets will spoil the stomach. 
Nor are sweets indispensable in life. Even 
Christmas can be celebrated without them. 

Festive seasons are dangerous solely on 
account of sweets, and if statistics show an 
increase of children's diseases or even mor- 
tality after Christmas, it is to be attributed 
to the exaggerated consumption of sweets. 

But because sweets are dangerous, you 
should not forbid your children to eat them ; 
on the contrary, whenever they come within 
the reach of the little ones, let them have of 
them as much as they demand and as the 
stock which you expose to sight will allow. 



SANITARY ATTENTION. 93 

it is better children have once or twice a 
spoiled stomach than that they hanker after 
forbidden fruit. Let them acquire them- 
selves the strength of refusing what is not 
good for them. Do not act the part of the 
police or of a paternal government, that 
forces on the people what in the opinion of 
the authorities, is good for them. Let the 
children have all they want, even though it 
be all there is in sight, and tell them they 
will have to bear the consequences. 

There may be exceptional conditions when 
the rule of liberty must be suspended, as it 
may sometimes be necessary to declare mar- 
tial law, but under ordinary circumstances 
let the rule remain in force, that children 
must be reared in liberty. 

The method of rearing children in liberty 
must not lead to unrestrained license, but 
to self-control, and educators must never 
lose sight of their ultimate aim. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NAMING 
THINGS IN THE NURSERY. 

The aim of all education is to enable the 
child when it attains to manhood to exercise 
dominion over the world of realities, and 
this is done by establishing in our children's 
minds clear representations of things and 
happenings. 

In the book of Genesis we read that God 
gave man dominion over all the animals and 
things of creation (i. 26) ; and he brought 
them unto Adam to see how he would call 
them (ii. 19). The connection between 
man's language and his superiority over all 
other creatures is not fortuitous, for by 
naming things man gains dominion over 
them. In language man mirrors the w^orld 
and classifies its phenomena. Through 
language alone can he acquire exact knowl- 
edge and learn to foredetermine the course 
of events. 

94 



NAMING THINGS. 95 

I had occasion to observe the truth of this 
broad statement when showing to an infant 
boy the movements of the machinery in- a 
factory. The child was at first frightened 
by the noise and naturally did not take kind- 
ly to the formidable din of the rolling-mill. 
But it is easy enough to accustom even a 
baby to any monotonous noise by imitating 
its sound. The rollers produce two peculiar 
clangs, — one sharp, the other muffled. 
When the little fellow was frightened we re- 
treated from the rolling-mill, but I con- 
tinued to remind him of the noise by telling 
him of the clang and the thump that were 
heard in rapid succession. He seemed to 
regain his self-possession, and the banging 
of the mill ceased to be formidable, for he 
grew rather curious and turned his head to 
look. Then he was slowly carried back to 
the rolling-mill, where he began to anticipate 
the noise as accompanied by the words clang, 
thump. The constant repetition of these 
words imitating the noise, kept the child pre- 
pared for what was coming, and he now soon 
became accustomed to the sight of the roll- 



96 OUR CHILDREN. 

ers which he began to contemplate, not 
without awe yet without terror. 

I had occasion to make similar observa- 
tions at the dump of a coal shaft. As soon 
as a child is prepared for the deafening 
noise of the falling coal by some adequate 
imitation of the sound, something like hoom 
hoom hoom, he will instead of fear show a 
desire to watch the process from a place of 
safety. 

In performing such experiments . care 
should be taken that he who carries the baby 
should never approach either nearer or more 
quickl}^ than the child desires to go, and chil- 
dren are never at a loss to indicate their 
wishes unequivocally. 

The naming of any happening is the first 
step towards mastering it. The image of 
the process, instead of being a bewildering 
sense-impression, becomes a mental act and 
is now clearly subsumed under, and repre- 
sented by, a somid symbol. Thus, to the 
memory of the event itself a new and higher 
soul-structure, a name representing the 
event, is added which becomes connected 



• NAMING THINGS. 97 

with, and will always at once awaken, a rec- 
ollection of the original sense-impression. 
The recollection is comparatively faint, and 
being not as overwhelming as the immediate 
presence of the reality itself will allow a 
calm contemplation of the process. With 
such preparation a repeated approach will 
not disturb the child's self-possession. He 
will now begin to observe, and the former 
feeling of fear will yield to an eagerness to 
witness the scene. 

There are in the bustle of a factory so 
many details which should be clearly ap- 
prehended, that it will be a great help to the 
growing intellect of the child if here again 
the most striking of them are named. 
While the coal car is being pushed to the 
verge of the dump, the process may be ac- 
companied by some such words as rolly- 
rolly-roUy. The turning of wheels may be 
accompanied by rotatory movements of the 
baby's arm, and you can almost see how 
thereby the child is enabled the better to 
watch the rolling. In an analogous way the 
movement of hammers, the backward and 



98 OUR CHILDREN. 

forward motions of pistons, the rotation of 
cranks, etc., etc., can be imitated, which will 
help the child to grasp quickly and clearly 
the elementary features of sense-impres- 
sions. 

The fires are best imitated by sounding 
the aspirate, h^h^hli\ bells by ding-dong, 
the puffing of engines by tch'-tch', animals in 
the traditional way, how-wow, moo-moo, etc. 

Adopting this method of naming events 
in baby language, I succeeded in teaching 
a very small child the mystery of the re- 
versing lever with its accompanying ma- 
chinery. When the reverse turned the drum 
of the coal-shaft-elevator in one direction, 
say to the right, I called the oscillations of 
the reversing gear vicU vack, vick vack, and 
when the lever was reversed and the drum 
turned in the opposite direction I called it 
vack vick, vack vick. The reversion of the 
name suggests the reversion of the move- 
ment and helps to fix in a child's mind the 
sense-impression in its essential features. 
A little steam-engine model was an ad- 
ditional help, giving an inside view of the 



NAMING THINGS. 99 

piston and side valves in their connection 
with the reverse lever. 

The child must have the most essential 
features of processes and events delineated 
in his mind in strong outlines and it will 
then be easy to add the more complicated 
details without causing mystification or con- 
fusion. 

That the chicken-yard, farms, sheep-folds, 
and other places where living animals can 
be observed should be visited, that birds, 
dogs, horses, should be watched and their 
behavior noted, goes without saying, and 
evierywhere the same method should be ap- 
plied to render the sense-impressions more 
distinct by gestures as well as names. 

If in the imagination of the child sense- 
pictures are thus connected with definite 
sounds, it will be easy to revive the memories 
of former experiences; and one is enabled 
to tell to babies when they are restless either 
in the evening or at night, stories which 
draw upon their little stock of memories, 
and it will quickly quiet them because they 
are greatly interested in hearing the tales 

LOFC, 



100 OUR CHILDREN. 

of their own experiences which will be the 
more interesting to them the greater the ter- 
rors that had originally to be overcome. 

The application of baby language is of 
manifold use especially at night, when for 
some reason a child is restless and the usual 
methods fail to quiet his imagination. 

The usual lullaby songs are upon the 
whole very good ; longdrawn notes, words of 
soothing sound, with prevailing o and espe- 
cially u tones are most soporific; but it is 
sometimes difficult to put babies to sleep, 
and then you may in a hushed voice which 
will raise expectancy sing a story consisting 
simply of the repetition of familiar sounds. 
The child will listen to the song, nonsensical 
though it may appear to outsiders and to all 
people not initiated into the mysteries of 
baby language. It will quiet down, and give 
the nurse a chance gradually to change her 
song to more monotonous lullaby tunes, such 
as "the rolling-mill goes clang-thump!'' or 
*'the choo-choo says ding-dong/' or "the lit- 
tle lamb says haa, haa/' etc. The baby will 
listen with as much interest as older children 



NAMING THINGS. 101 

manifest when a fairy tale is told, and the 
interesting images will by and by be trans- 
formed into dream visions. 

It is easy enough for a nurse to watch and 
to influence the growing intellect of an in- 
fant, and every nurse ought to be able to ac- 
count for and understand her charge's vo- 
cabulary of those sense-impressions which 
in the beginning of life play a prominent 

part. 

* * * 

Special attention should be paid to such 
events and natural phenomena as are apt to 
frighten children. When thunderstorms 
come up, the father or mother should take 
the baby without any excitement. Show it 
the lightning with signs of an appreciation 
of its beauty and prepare the baby's ear for 
the rumbling thunder. The least evidence 
of fear on the part of the parents will affect 
the child and may make him a coward for 
life. Of course, you must avoid coming 
near the iron pipes and electric wires, and 
must remain in such places as are compara- 
tively safe. Moving about is upon the whole 



102 OUR CHILDREN. 

better than staying in one place, because it 
diverts the child's attention from the 
formidable impression. It must be remem- 
bered that troops under fire who remain in- 
active break down and lose courage sooner 
than troops who are advancing or are other- 
wise kept busy. 

These hints, if observed, help to establish 
in the child a self-possession which in later 
years will be so much needed. 

Which impressions should be the first 
stratum of the child 's soul, depends of course 
on surroundings and other conditions. 
However, we must expect that the compre- 
hension of facts will be followed by a de- 
termination to handle the realities which 
have been watched in early childhood. 
Therefore when machinery is shown, the 
child should at once learn with what care 
and precautions it must be handled. 



COUNTING 

A little boy of about five years was in the 
habit of counting 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and he stuck 
to this habit. He was told that he omitted 
4 and 6, and he probably understood the cor- 
rection, but whenever he began to count he 
fell back for a long time into his old habit 
of counting the numbers wrongly. The 
reason was that by accident he had learned 
the numbers in the wrong way and it stuck 
to him. 

Another little child always called a sea- 
gull in his picture-book a swallow, for he 
had been told so by his nurse, and got ir- 
ritated when contradicted, insisting even to 
tears again and again on its being a swallow. 
By and by, however, he relented, but even 
then he continued to say, "This is not a 
swallow, but a seagull," and only in time did 
he drop the negative expression and knew 
and declared without any irritation that it 

103 



104 OUR CHILDREN. 

was a seagull. Such trouble originates by a 
little mistake, and shall we not be careful 
in laying the foundation of a human soul ? 

As to counting, I would say the easiest 
way to teach it is to count the steps by walk- 
ing up or down stairs. If this be done pa- 
tiently again and again, the child begins to 
listen to the numbers and will very soon be- 
gin to accompany each step with its proper 
number. The first mistake should be 
avoided, and my experience is that children 
will, without the slightest trouble, learn to 
count first to 12, then to 20. When they 
have learned to count to 20, they are pre- 
pared to count to any number up to 100 or 
more. The third step is an intellectual step, 
by learning to understand the function of 
the decades 30, 40, 50, etc., which are, how- 
ever, clearly grasped as running parallel 
with 3, 4, 5, and so forth. 

Before an attempt can be made to count 
the steps, a preliminary exercise might be 
the frequent repetition of 1, 2, 3, which can 
be practised on various occasions; for in- 
stance, when turning oif or on the electric 



COUNTING. 105 

light, or by playing peekaboo, etc., whereby 
the order of the three numbers impresses 
itself mechanically upon the memory of a 
child. Then proceed to counting fingers 
and toes, and only when the first five num- 
bers can be repeated without difficulty, pro- 
ceed with counting other objects. 

One peculiar j^hase in learning how to 
count is marked by the child's ability to 
stop at the right time. Childi'en first 
acquire the mechanical memory of saying 1, 
2, 3, 4, 5, etc. When they are shown five 
spoons or five chips or other things of any 
description and are requested to count them, 
they begin to count mechanically without be- 
ing able to stop at the right time. It indi- 
cates a more advanced degree of mentality 
when the child possesses a perfect parallel- 
ism between the names of the numbers and 
the things which, by being pointed at, are to 
be counted. The process of counting has 
reached its maturity when a child learns to 
stop at the proper time. In the beginning 
the tendency will predominate that when- 
ever the child begins to count, it will count 



106 OUR CHILDREN. 

the whole series of numbers as far as it 
knows them ; but the relation between things 
and the series of word-images of the nu- 
merals is easily established by stopping the 
child and summing up the situation by say- 
ing: There are five spoons, there are five 
chips, or whatever it may be. 

In the case of practising counting, as in 
all other instances of memorizing, we must 
consider that a great number of mechan- 
ically impressed memories will subsequently 
render the conscious and intelligent manip- 
ulation of the ideas connected therewith 
easier. The subconscious memories which 
have been early acquired, form a very valu- 
able capital which will never fail to be most 
serviceable. As children now are commonly 
educated, they have either no such mechan- 
ically impressed memories in their minds, 
or their impressions, be they numbers, im- 
ages of things, or other conceptions, form 
an irregular conglomeration which will 
rather serve to bewilder than to help them 
when the years of school-life begin. A 
healthy development of mind is possible only 



COUNTING. 107 

when our subconscious notions are distinct 
and clear. This can be accomplished by 
rendering as definite as possible the first 
sense-impressions, which precede the form- 
ation of more conscious and more intel- 
lectual operations. 

Before concluding this chapter it seems 
advisable to forestall an objection which 
might be raised to the proposition that our 
subconscious notions should be distinct and 
clear. The terms clear and subconscious do 
not exclude one another. An idea or a 
sense-impression may be quite distinct and 
correct in its details without fully rising 
into the field of conscious attention, and it 
is one of the most important duties of the 
educator to devote much care to the province 
of the subconscious which in our intellectual 
as well as our emotional life is of greater 
significance than at first sight it might ap- 
pear. 

The first simple examples of the multipli- 
cation table should be done with concrete 
objects, at the very start with the child's 
fingers, then with the beads of an abacus 



108 OUR CHILDREN. 

or counters. The abacus should consist of 
ten rows of ten beads each, and if counters 
are used they should when counted in large 
numbers, be piled up in heaps of ten, so as 
to represent the decimal system which to us 
is and will remain the basis of number-lore. 

Multiplication tables should be worked 
out by the children themselves, and they 
should be helped to find out for themselves 
the relations of numbers to geometrical fig- 
ures such as the areas of quadrangles and 
their purely arithmetical proportions. 

For one of my little boys who found it 
very hard to remember the multiplication 
table of 9, 1 invented an easy method, which 
I will here communicate for the benefit of 
other children. 

Put both hands on the table and let every 
finger successively stand for one number. 
When you are asked to multiply by nine you 
lift the finger representing the multiplier 
and read off the product from the remaining 
fingers. The number of fingers on the left 
represents the tens, and that on the right 
the units of the product. 



MIND-READING AND 
ARITHMETIC 

A good method of keeping up the interest 
of boys and girls in mathematics is to ex- 
plain to them easy arithmetical tricks which 
they can readily perform for themselves. A 
very simple card-trick, which appears quite 
wonderful to the uninitiated, is as follows: 

Ten cards from ace to ten are laid in or- 
der in a row, beginning at the right and 
with their faces down. The performer of 
the trick anounces that he will tell the 
number of cards which may be moved by 
one of the company from the right to the 
left and in addition pick up the card bear- 
ing this number. As we wish to explain 
the trick, we will play with the faces of 
the cards upwards; and the original order 
(when uncovered) will be this: 



T* • ^ *'* *'' *^ >.* V.T* TV VT* VT* 

4. 4. 4.*4. *^+ •!• + •!• * + 

•{»«|» i|»«{a al**!* «|*^ J^ J^ af*^ •{»«}• 






109 



no 



OUR CHILDREN. 



The magician then leaves the room, and 
some one who wishes to test the extraordi- 
nary accomplishment of his young friend 
transfers a few cards in their regular order 
from the right side to the left. Let four 
cards be moved, then the new order will be 
this: 






You will at once see that the four-spot 
has become the first card of the row. The 
first card tells the number of the cards 
moved. Accordingly the young performer 
lifts up the first card, and seeing that it is 
a four-spot declares, "Four cards have been 
moved." The art of the magician consists 
in giving the impression that he knows the 
card before he picks it up, and that the dis- 
covery of the position of the four-spot is 
only an additional proof of his omniscience. 
He goes out again, knowing beforehand that 
whatever number of cards may be moved 
from the right side to the left, the card 
which bears that number will alwavs be 



MIND-READING. 



Ill 



found in the last position of the ten-spot, 
which at present is the next place after the 
four cards transposed in the first move ; i. e., 
in the fifth place. If no card is moved, the 
ten-spot will remain in its place and will be 
picked up as a sign that all ten cards, or 
none at all, which means the same thing, 
have been moved. But suppose that three 
cards have been moved, then the three will 
be in the fifth place : 



4. 4. 
4. 4. 




4. 4. 
4. 4. 
4. 4* 




4. 4. 
4. 4. 




4. 4. 
4. 4. 




4- 








+ 


4.* + 

*4.* 
4.*4. 




4. 4. 
4. 4. 




4. 4. 
4.*+ 



The place of the card showing the num- 
ber of cards moved will always be ' ' one plus 
the total number of moves, ' ' and it is a mat- 
ter of course that only units count. 

After the' second move the card to be 
taken up will be 1 + 4 + 3 = 8, and sup- 
posing that five cards are now moved the 
five will appear in the eighth place. Thus 
we may continue, and the uninitiated will 
wonder what trick is at the bottom of the 
performance, which is nothing but a very 
simple example in addition. 



112 OUR CHILDREN. 

Another trick, wliich may be called "mind- 
reading," is also the work of simple arith- 
metic. 

Suppose you request a person to think of 
any number from 1 to 15 and to point out to 
you the rows in which his number occurs 
in the following scheme : 

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 

2 3 6 7 10 11 14 15 
4 5 6 7 12 13 14 15 
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 

You will at once know the number which the 
person has in mind when he tells you in 
which horizontal rows it occurs, for all you 
have to do is to add together the first num- 
bers of these rows. A close inspection will 
tell you that 3 occurs in the two lines be- 
ginning with 1 and 2; the number 5 in the 
lines beginning with 1 and 4, etc., and 15 in 
all four lines beginning with 1, 2, 4 and 8. 

If we now replace the numbers with pic- 
tures, the arithmetical clue will be concealed, 
and the audience will be thoroughly mysti- 
fied. In order to assist the little magician, 



MINDREADING. 113 

whose memory is not as yet well trained, we 
propose to replace the nmnbers with pictures 
which will readily suggest the numbers that 
they represent. This may be done by rep- 
resenting the four numbers 1, 2, 4, and 8 by 
wheels; 1 by a wheelbarrow, which has one 
wheel ; 2 by a bicycle or a cannon, which has 
two wheels; 4 by a wagon, which has four 
wheels ; and 8 by an engine which has eight 
wheels. Another method of representing 
these four numbers would be by feet: 1 as 
a top or as a stork standing on one foot; 2 
as a man; 4 as any quadruped; and 8 as a 
spider or an octopus. 

The other figures may be rejDresented by 
other objects suggesting the several num- 
bers. Clover may represent 3 ; a hand or a 
starfish, 5; an insect having six feet, 6; a 
rainbow, 7; the Union Jack, which can be 
made with 9 strokes, or a school-house, will 
represent 9 (nine o'clock being the hour for 
beginning the recitations) ; the decalogue of 
Moses, 10; or if this be too weighty a sub- 
ject or too difficult to draw, take a tent, the 
sound of whose name will remind you of 



114 



OUR CHILDREN. 



(T^ 






MINDREADING. 



115 













1 
^ 
^ 



/I 




116 



OUR CHILDREN. 







i^^^'^-i 



j,<P 



n 



^ 
^ 
^ 






i^lrt-ja3«S^^3 



MIND-READING. 



117 









118 OUR CHILDREN. 

ten ; 11 would be well represented by a foot- 
ball; 12 by the meridian sun, or by a clock 
or watch whose small hand points to twelve ; 
the American flag with its thirteen stripes 
will represent 13 ; another representation of 
13 would be Christ with the twelve Apostles, 
or a cross : for the idea that 13 is an unlucky 
number originated through the thought of 
the crucifixion, Christ having been the thir- 
teenth at the Last Supper ; fourteen may be 
the crown of Louis XIV., or his coat-of- 
arms, or a valentine, since St. Valentine's 
day falls on the fourteenth of February, or 
the two constellations, the Dipper and the 
Pleiades, each one consisting of seven bril- 
liant stars visible to the naked eye; while 
15, finally, may be represented by a die show- 
ing the faces 4, 5, and 6. 

All these things can be easily drawn by 
children and should be so arranged on four 
cards as to reproduce the number-arrange- 
ment given above. Each card will cor- 
respond to a row, and in our illustrations the 
first number of each row is represented by 
the picture in the upper left-hand corner. 



MIND-READINa. 119 

It is not necessary to preserve the same or- 
der, if our youngster only remembers the 
place of the pictures which represent the 
numbers that must be added. Having 
drawn his four cards, he presents them to 
some one with the request that he think of 
some of the objects and hand him back those 
cards on which this object appears. Each 
card that is handed back represents a num- 
ber, and their sum indicates the object 
thought of. Thus if a person thinks of the 
flag (number 13), he will hand back the 
cards bearing the pictures wheelbarrow, 
wagon, and engine, as being those on which 
the flag occurs, representing the numbers 1, 
4, and 8, the sum of which makes 13. 

The underlying theory of the trick is of 
course old .and pretty well known, but the 
idea of expressing it in pictures that repre- 
sent the numbers and that can be easily 
drawn by the children themselves, is new 
and may be welcome to educators and par- 
ents. 



NATURAL SCIENCE 

Use every opportunity in life to teach 
children the elementary facts and truths of 
the sciences which in later life will be of 
use to them. Familiarize them as much as 
possible with instructive observations. 
Teach them through the eye a knowledge of 
facts that will serve as examples of impor- 
tant scientific truths. Convey your first in- 
struction by merely showing something, by 
making experiments, etc., but beware of su- 
peradding too quickly the theories invented 
to explain the facts, and if you mention them 
characterize them at once as hypothetical. 
Let the exjDcriment speak for itself and re- 
mind the child of similar or analogous ex- 
periments and experiences. 

Some of the simplest experiments in 
physics can be repeated in the nursery. Let 
the children lift an inverted glass from the 
bottom of the bathtub above the surface of 

120 



NATURAL SCIENCE. 121 

the water ; let them dip the inverted glass to- 
gether with the air into the water ; or take a 
toothbrush stand, with a hole in its lower 
edge and let the water run forth, whereby 
you can point out that the parabola of the 
outflowing streamlet is proportionate to the 
pressure of the water inside the vessel. 
Then close tightly with your hand the top 
of the toothbrush stand filled with water, 
in which case no water will come out, or per- 
haps only a few drops will drip down. 

Make the children see the depth which 
blocks of w^ood require to float, let them coiti- 
pare blocks of different densities, and you 
will soon help them to discover for them- 
selves the law that the weight of a floating 
body is equal to the weight of the water 
which it displaces. 

Set the children to thinking why empty 
vessels, although made of porcelain or iron, 
will float, while they will go down when 
filled with water. 

Further, the children who know that steel 
is heavy will take delight in seeing a needle 
float that has carefully been placed upon the 



122 OUR CHILDREN. 

surface of the water. The experiment will 
succeed more easily if the needle is dipped 
in butter. The cohesion of the particles of 
water among themselves is strong enough 
to carry little bodies such as needles, if they 
are smooth enough not to break the connec- 
tion of the surface which acts like a thin 
film. Small pieces of wire netting (such as 
is used for window screens), especially if 
lightly coated with paraffin, will also float, 
but a pin goes down, for its head will tear 
the film. 

Again, on some occasion or other place a 
coin into a tub, or perhaps better into a 
dish or a mug, and let the children look at 
it from a given place where the coin is hid- 
den behind the rim. Then fill the tub with 
water and the coin becomes visible on ac- 
count of the refraction of the rays of light 
which produce the picture. Then put a 
spoon into the water and call their attention 
to the deflection of the image. 

A piece of the wire netting of window- 
screens is also useful to show the children 
the inside and whole make-up of a flame, by 



NATURAL SCIENCE. 123 

repeating all the simple experiments wMch 
are made in a lesson on physics. 

When you take a walk with the children 
after a rain, show them the little streamlets, 
which are typical of rivers and their tribu- 
taries in their work of excavating river-beds 
and valleys. 

Make electrical experiments with the silk 
samples for mamma's dresses, by rubbing 
them with the bottom of a glass, and watch 
the threads when approached twice succes- 
sively by various objects, as by steel knives, 
silver spoons, the hand, celluloid or gutta 
percha, and glass. Comb their hair or your 
own beard in the dark when the air is dry, 
and let them see the sparks, and listen to the 
cracking noise of this baby-thunderstorm in 
papa 's whiskers. 

Show them the so-called illusions of the 
senses in which our psychologists take so 
much interest, and let them measure the dis- 
tances which, though they are equal, appear 
different.' It will interest the children, and 

iSee The Monist, Vol. III., p. 153, and Scripture's 
Thinking, Feeling, and Doing, p. 187. 



124 OUR CHILDREN. 

they will wonder how their judgment is mis- 
guided. If you have a color-wheel repeat 
now and then for mere amusement color ex- 
periments and show the effects of contrast. 
Whenever you buy presents for children 
bear always in mind the instructive feature 
of games and toys. Children are by nature 
anxious to learn, and they will themselves 
prefer playthings which serve to educate 
them and teach a lesson. A toy through 
which a child becomes familiar with a phys- 
ical law of some kind is the best investment 
you can make and will, if properly used, 
amply repay the cost. Little steam engines, 
dynamos, motors and mechanical machinery 
of all kinds, pumps, fountains, etc., are now 
cheap enough to be the toys of the poor as 
well as of the rich. Of course parents must 
let their children work steam engines only 
with all necessary precaution; they should 
call attention to the danger of explosions 
and after a few practical trials should sim- 
ply use these dangerous toys as models for 
instruction. 



FACTS NOT FANCY 

There is a vicious habit now in vogue in 
the kindergarten which superadds to the 
facts of nature the imagination of fairy 
tales. If you wish your children to acquire 
a sound conception of reality and a sense 
for genuine poetry, you had better avoid 
this pseudo-fiction of the nursery which only 
distorts nature and detracts from her intrin- 
sic beauty. Facts as they are, are in them- 
selves sufficiently poetical and need not the 
false glitter of a fairy-tale imitation. This 
idea of carrying the romance of the fairy- 
tale into the realm of science only revives 
and strengthens the old metaphysicism 
which personifies abstractions and is apt 
later on to mystify the young mind. Thus 
we read in Arabella B. Buckle)^ 's Fairy-land 
of Science, a book which otherwise contains 
many good things, such sentences as these 
pp. 12-13) : 

125 



126 OUR CHILDREN. 

*^Can you see in your imagination fairy Co- 
hesion ever ready to lock atoms together when 
they draw very near to each other: or fairy 
Gravitation dragging rain-drops down to the 
earth: or the fairy of Crystallisation building 
up the snow-flakes in the clouds? ... Do you 
care to know how another strange fairy, 'Elec- 
tricity/ flings the lightning across the sky and 
causes the rmubling thunder? . . . And have 
you any curiosity about 'Chemical action,' 
which works such wonders in air, and land, and 
sea? If you have any wish to know and make 
friends of these invisible forces, the next ques- 
tion is, 

^'How are you to enter the fairy-land of 
science ? 

''There is but one way. Like the knight or 
peasant in the fairy tales, you must open your 
eyes. There is no lack of objects, everything 
around you will tell some history if touched 
with the fairy wand of imagination. . . . The 
fire in the grate, the lamp by the bedside, the 
water in the tumbler, the fly on the ceiling 
above, the flower in the vase on the table, any- 
thing, everything, has its history, and can re- 
veal to us nature's invisible fairies." 

This is not the right way of making sci- 
ence poetical. The facts of nature are in 
themselves beautiful and need not the 



FACTS NOT FANCY. 127 

mythology of fairies created by a personifi- 
cation of scientific abstractions, the errone- 
ously so-called forces of nature. The meta- 
physical assumption of forces which are 
supposed to work all the miracles of natural 
phenomena is the source of much confusion 
and should be carefully guarded against. 
If any personification be needed for the sake 
of imparting an additional interest to the 
stories of nature, speak of the actual things 
as living creatures. Speak of the water 
droi3 as expanding into vapor, as condens- 
ing in the cold air into a snow crystal, as 
falling upon the ground, as melting in the 
warm sun and running down hill, but do 
not people the child's mind with the fairies 
of crystalization, gravitation, cohesion, elec- 
tricity, and chemism. Teach children to see 
truth and beauty in the facts themselves, not 
in imaginary goblins and fairies. Make 
them watch the phenomena of nature and 
point out to them that all things are astir 
with activity and aglow with an eager dis- 
position to do one thing or another accord- 
ing to circumstances. 



FOREIGN LANGUAGES 

Acquaintance with foreign languages 
should be cultivated at an early age, by in- 
teresting the children in other nations. 
Teach children little German and French 
verses and phrases, only be careful that the 
pronunciation is perfect. Children catch 
the accent of strange sounds better than 
adults, and will reproduce them to perfec- 
tion. According to the author's own ex- 
perience, children take delight in listening 
again and again to little ditties and poems, 
and will soon begin to repeat them. It is 
advisable to practise such linguistic exer- 
cises before going to sleep and to rehearse 
on the next morning the recitations of the 
previous evening. 

We recommend such poems as Lafon- 
taine's fables in French, some of Goethe's, 
Schiller's, Burger's, and Heine's poems in 
German, ^sop 's fables in Latin, the Lord 's 
Prayer in Greek, etc., etc. 

128 



FOREIGN LANGUAGES. 129 

It is also advisable to introduce now and 
then counting in other tongues, which may 
be practised in the gymnasium where the 
number of jumps or other actions can be 
counted, or in any other place with similar 
opportunities. 

Children will pick up foreign sounds 
without difficulty, if parents or teachers 
limit their instruction to the sounds only and 
do not tax the minds of their little pupils 
with grammatical explanations. The sound 
must come first, and the sound alone; the 
sense of the sound should be understood, but 
an exact grammatical analysis of its mean- 
ing must not be given at the beginning, for 
grammar bores children and is apt to de- 
stroy the pleasure they naturally take in 
learning something about other languages. 
If children have learned by rote a number 
of pieces in a foreign tongue, when they 
have grown older and maturer they will be 
glad to know something about the construc- 
tion of sentences, and a grammar lesson, 
otherwise so tedious, will then be welcome to 
them. Later on, a long time after they have 



136 OUR CHILDREN. 

learned to read and to write in their mother 
tongue, children may in school be taught to 
read and write the foreign poems which 
they have learned by rote in their younger 
years, and they will attend their French and 
German lessons in school with greater zeal 
than if they knew nothing of these lan- 
guages. 

It may be permitted to add here a few 
words concerning the dead languages which 
in Europe as well as in America are still 
taught in the old-fashioned way. The au- 
thor of these articles has had experience in 
teaching Latin according to a more modern 
method, and, while engaged as scientific 
teacher at the Royal Corps of Cadets in 
Dresden, Germany, he succeeded within the 
space of one school year in making the pu- 
pils of his class (Quarta) as proficient in 
speaking and in writing Latin as were the 
best scholars of the highest class (Prima) 
after a four years ' course. 

And how was this accomplished? 

Simply by making the boys learn by heart 
every week a few lines of Latin prose or 



FOREIGN LANGUAGES. 131 

verse. First simple stories sliould be se- 
lected for the purpose, in the style of 
^sop's fables, then passages fi'om histo- 
rians and orations of famous men. There is 
plenty of material in Livy, Caesar, Cicero, 
and also in Seneca, and the verses of Ovid 
are as simple as the occasion requires. The 
scholars had first to render these pieces into 
Latin from an oral dictation which was 
given them in their mother-tongue. Their 
translations were corrected and their mis- 
takes discussed. Copies of the passage had 
to be made until the whole piece was per- 
fect, and finally it was recited before the 
class. This method of teaching Latin was 
in the beginning hard on some of the boys, 
but it grew easier with every new piece that 
was taught and learned. The old pieces 
were constantly repeated, and all grammat- 
ical rules were discussed in connection with 
the sentences which had thus been com- 
mitted to memory. At the end of the school 
year the boys knew about forty Latin stories 
by heart and were thoroughly familiar with 
them. In this way they had a direct com- 



132 OUR CHILDREN. 

mand over a number of phrases and had ac- 
quired an unusual readiness in their prac- 
tical use of the language, a result which 
within so short a time had never before been 
accomplished in the school. 

While the best scholars educated in the 
old method were able to tell the rule and 
follow it, these boys built their sentences 
correctly without thinking of the rule and 
deduced grammatical rules from the in- 
stances which they knew by heart. 

A teacher of languages must be very exact 
in the beginning, — slow but painstakingly 
correct in every particular; he must choose 
the best passages for committing them to 
memory; he must insist on a clear pronun- 
ciation and leave no doubt about the details 
of grammar and construction. There is no 
use in rushing the boys, or overburdening 
them with home-work. On the contrary, the 
teacher should render the labor of commit- 
ting these pieces of memory easy by discuss- 
ing their difficulties, which will aif ord ample 
opportunity to make the scholars read the 
sentences and repeat them as pronounced by 



FOREIGN LANGUAGES. 133 

the teacher. The facility which pupils 
gradually acquire in learning a language 
serves to keep their enthusiasm alive, until 
they know enough to allow a cursive read- 
ing of literature which will involve a more 
rapid progress in acquiring a general pro- 
ficiency. 

I would make bold to say that to acquire 
the command of at least one living tongue 
in addition to our own is an indispensable 
condition of a higher education. It not only 
broadens the mind but also our sympathies, 
for thereby we learn to appreciate other 
views of life, the beauties of foreign litera- 
tures, and the accomplishments of other na- 
tions. It will act as a check on that nar- 
rowness of national prejudices, often mis- 
styled patriotism, and will contribute much 
toward an establishment of international 
good will, so highly desirable in the life of 
a civilized people. 



MATHEMATICS 

Mathematical instruction should begin 
very early, but do not begin with axioms, 
theorems, and long-winded arguments with 
their monotonous refrain, quod erat 
demonstrandum. That is death to the spirit 
of mathematics. Not only is the doctrine, 
that all mathmatics rest upon axioms an 
error,^ but to begin the first lesson with ex- 
planations of axioms is a blunder. Let 
children begin to learn geometry by doing, 
not by reasoning. Let the reasoning come 
in as an incidental aid to construction. Let 
the purpose be that of achieving something, 
but never do any reflecting or arguing for 
the mere sake of thinking. 

Action is the mainspring of life. No in- 
terest can be taken in anything, except there 
is a certain aim to be reached. Thought 
must step in as the assistant to work. 

^ For further details on the redundancy of axioms see 
the writer's Primer of Philosophy, pp 51 et seq. 

134 



MATHEMATICS. 135 

Thought that does not serve a purpose 
known to the child, will be felt as an op- 
pressive tyranny. Arguments will bore the 
child that is induced to reason about things 
before it feels the need of reasoning. Par- 
ents and teachers must not presuppose but 
create in the child the desire for knowledge. 

In order to lay a foundation in mathe- 
matics, parents and teachers should give the 
child paper and a pencil. Then let them 
make a ruler of the paper by folding it. 
The fold in the paper is called a straight 
line, and, if folded again so that one end of 
the straight line covers the other end, the 
new fold will cut the old fold at right 
angles. These definitions of straight lines 
and right angles should be introduced, not 
argument atively, but simply by naming the 
products of the child's operations. 

After this brief introduction, hand the 
child a pair of compasses, giving him due 
warning to be careful with the points. Let 
the child become familiar with this new in- 
strument by drawing a circle and dividing 
the circumference with the radius into six 



13G OUR CHILDREN. 

equal parts ; which will serve to make a num- 
ber of figures of various forms and combina- 
tions, stars with curved rays, hexagons, 
equilateral triangles, and six-cornered stars. 

Another time ask your little friend to 
draw a straight line and name one end for 
himself, the other end for his brother, sister, 
cousin, or friend. Then tell him to divide 
the line with the assistance of the compasses, 
and construct a boundary line at right 
angles. 

Our pair of compasses is a good fellow. 
He has no head, no body, but two long legs 
and can pace off the way for us. By sweep- 
ing with the same span of somewhat more 
than half of the line from both its ends, we 
draw two intersecting circles, and there will 
be few children who will not at once jump 
at the conclusion that when a straight line 
is drawn through the points of intersection, 
the problem will be solved. 

Thereupon let your little pupil draw an 
angle for himself and one or several parallel 
angles for his brothers and friends. This 
would be an appropriate occasion to reveal 



MATHEMATICS. 137 

to liim the secrets of parallel lines with their 
vertical, alternating, and correspondent an- 
gles. His mathematical comprehension will 
now be mature enough to understand that an 
angle is not the surface between its sides, 
but their inclination, and that angles of the 
same inclination are equal. 

Having divided a line into two equal 
parts, let the young mathematician divide 
an angle, which he will now easily accom- 
plish. 

All further work can begin to bear a more 
definite mathematical character. Let the 
child construct triangles from three sides, 
from two sides and one angle, from two an- 
gles and one side. Call his attention, with- 
out entering into details, to the fact that 
from three given pieces the other three not- 
given pieces are determined, bearing in 
mind an exception which leaves the choice 
between two possibilities; and also that tri- 
angles may be turned around. 

The method of calculating areas can be 
taught to beginners by telling them the story 
of a farmer who exchanged his farm, which 



138 OUR CHILDREN. 

was in the shape of a square, for another 
one of exactly the same sides but with 
slanting angles. The farmer soon found out 
that there was less work in plowing and less 
seed-corn was needed, but that the crop too 
was greatly reduced. The man was no 
mathematician; he had allowed himself to 
be cheated. The solution of the problem 
will now be followed up with great interest 
and can easily be accomplished. 

In a similar way let the childi'en operate 
with circles for determining the nature and 
interrelations of tangents, sectors, central, 
and peripheral angles, etc., etc., and let them 
find the inscribed and circumscribed circles 
of triangles, the Pythagorean proposition, 
etc., etc. And all this can be taught in a 
kindergarten way, without ever resorting to 
arguments and demonstrations, but simply 
by setting the child to work and giving him 
a task to accomplish. When he has come 
into possession of a fair stock of mathemat- 
ical knowledge, he will now and then go 
astray and become the dupe of some miscon- 
ception. He will then be glad to become ac- 



MATHEMATICS. 139 

quainted with methods of proof which will 
enable him to argue about his operations 
and to become sure that his constructions 
are right. 

Arithmetic should in the same way be 
taught by setting children to work, i. e., by 
making them do something, by weighing, by 
measuring, and by comparing different 
lengths, areas, and volumes, as well as dif- 
ferent weights. 

In spite if its importance, mathematics is 
still one of the neglected branches in the 
education of the child, while much progress 
has been made in the primary instruction of 
drawing, painting, music, and physics, where 
better methods suggest themselves more 
readily. Mathematicians of high standing 
devote their energies to a furtherance of the 
most abstruse problems of their craft and 
have so far not as yet shown any ambition 
to come to the assistance of the kindergarten 
and primary schools. 



MUSIC IN EDUCATION 

Music is not indispensable to life. There 
are many people in civilized countries and 
among primitive races who are absolutely 
unmusical, and j^et they do not seem to be 
the worse off among their fellow beings. 
For this reason, it might be considered that 
music is redundant and could be omitted in 
our plan of education. Nevertheless, it has 
been retained and perhaps not without good 
reason; for though man can live without it 
he is greatl}^ benefited by it, and those in 
whose life music is a blank miss much of 
the broadening and refining influences which 
this wonderful art affords. 

Music is a world of its own. After the 
analogy of mathematics it builds up a uni- 
verse in the realm of imagination, the laws 
of which may be considered purely a priori. 
Music is not a mere mimicry of bird-song, 
or of any noises in the surrounding world, 

140 



MUSIC IN EDUCATION. 141 

as has been suggested by those aestheticians 
who believe that all art is an imitation of 
nature. Music is an independent construc- 
tion of motives, motions, tonal and rhyth- 
mic progressions, which take place in the 
domain of sound- vibrations. Musical 
themes may present analogous phases to the 
world of human sentiment and action, they 
may accompany outbursts of poetry; they 
may help to characterize dramatic action on 
the stage; they may depict pastoral, mar- 
tial, or other events of human life; but 
we must remember that music remains 
purely tonal and never changes into real 
imitation of the occasions for which it has 
been invented. It is the most abstract art, 
and yet in spite of all its abstractness it is 
the most direct in its effects. Animals are 
attracted by music and there are few people 
even among the musically untrained who 
would not be stirred by the strains of an im- 
pressive melody. 

For all these reasons it seems desirable 
that music should form part of our educa- 
tion. By its means we learn to appreciate 



142 OUR CHILDREN. 

that a representation of the world in words 
is not the only possible aspect of life, and 
so it will prevent the onesidedness of those 
who think that they have exhausted the 
comprehension of reality after they have 
weighed and measured its materials and 
have reduced its phenomena to exact for- 
mulas. Life is too rich to be limited to one 
mode of interpretation, and even the meth- 
ods of science, important though they are, 
touch only the hem of life's garment. 
Music is an instance only of the wealth of 
mental capabilities, and it is well fitted to 
the purpose of illustrating how deep is the 
realm of sentiment in which life finds its 
echo and reflection. 

The usual method of teaching music in 
the schools is by singing which is indeed the 
natural beginning of developing an interest 
in the tonal world ; for in singing we create 
the tones ourselves and utilize the musical 
instrument which nature herself has given 
us — an instrument which is part of our- 
selves and echoes in most direct reflection 
the sentiments of our inmost souls. Sec- 



MUSIC IN EDUCATION. 143 

ond to singing, the piano is commonly intro- 
duced, but here I venture to disagree with 
the common practice. It is true that the 
l)iano contains the most complete arrange- 
ment for practical use and is the instru- 
ment on which our typical conception of 
music has been developed. A knowledge of 
the piano is therefore indispensable to a mu- 
sical education, but it does not recommend 
itself for educational purposes because the 
notes on the piano are ready made and the 
pupil has simply to touch the keys to pro- 
duce the tone, while the correctness of the 
note depends on the instrument and not on 
the player. For educational purposes the 
violm would be by far preferable because on 
the violin the player produces his own notes, 
and if his notes are incorrect he has no right 
to complain, for he has to tune the violin 
and every note he plays is of his own mak- 
ing. For this reason I would consider it 
desirable for any musical education, that a 
pupil should at least for some time be taught 
the violin and learn to handle that instru- 
ment with some degree of skill. 



144 OUIl CHILDREN. 

Of late the musical world has been bene- 
fited by a new invention which seems to me 
to promise great success. The invention of 
the pianola, or by whatever name the piano- 
playing instrument may go, has made acces- 
sible to large multitudes the knowledge of 
musical composition. Until its introduc- 
tion, acquaintance with good music was re- 
served only for specialists and concert- 
goers, and the difficulty of the technique 
rendered it impossible for common mortals 
to familiarize themselves with a great vari- 
ety of music. Concert-goers hear a sonata 
once and perhaps a second or third time, but 
not often enough to become truly familiar 
with the intentions of the composer. The 
result is that they will be bored the first 
time, and that the meaning of the beauty 
of classical music will rarely dawn upon 
them and only after a long time. It is for 
these reasons that truly good music is not 
sufficiently appreciated while rag-time melo- 
dies which catch the ear with impressive 
syncopation receive the plaudits of the 
masses. Now the piano-player will tend to 



MUSIC IN EDUCATION. 145 

do away with these difficulties. It will en- 
able people of musical disposition who have 
not the time to acquire the necessary tech- 
nique for enjoying truly good music to study 
the works of composers before they have a 
chance of hearing them in a concert, and 
they will find that a sonata which otherwise 
would have been tedious to them will prove 
not only interesting but also instructive and 
helpful. They will be able to follow the 
music knowing the succession of the dif- 
ferent motives and in place of ennui will ex- 
perience satisfaction. 

Ai'tists as a rule are opposed to the piano 
player, and their dislike is easily accounted 
for and to some extent justified. It changes 
an artistic performance into a mechanical 
reproduction, and thus threatens to take 
from music its most essential and truly ar- 
tistic featui'e, — individual conception and 
interpretation. But this is no reason why 
the use of the piano player should not be 
encouraged. The same objection was of- 
fered against the introduction of the photo- 
graph, which threatened to subvert the ar- 



146 OUR CHILDREN. 

tistic work of the painter, and in this case 
too, we see a mechanical performance dis- 
place artistic reproduction. It is true that 
the photograph has crowded a great num- 
ber of portrait painters out of business and 
has made picture making a common posses- 
sion, even among those who do not possess 
skill in drawing. Nevertheless, it has not 
only benefited mankind as a whole, but the 
professional artist also; for the mediocre 
limners have disappeared, and the standard 
of pictorial art has been raised, rendering 
paintings much more valuable than photo- 
graphs, and portraits in oil even more de- 
sirable than before the days of the profes- 
sional gallery and amateur camera. 

After these comments it goes without say- 
ing that the piano-player will become help- 
ful and valuable in musical education of any 
kind. It brings within reach the knowledge 
of our best masterpieces and will enable 
every one to familiarize himself without 
much effort with studies which may be col- 
lateral to his own specialty. 



PLAYFUL INSTRUCTION, AND 
GENIUS 

An old friend of mine asked me some time 
ago whether it was advisable to begin teach- 
ing children at a tender age, not of course 
by systematic lessons, but by playful in- 
struction. One of the professors of a school 
had advised him not to impart any playful 
instruction, " because, '^ he said, "instruc- 
tion is a serious thing, and if it were taught 
playfully it would demoralize the boy's na- 
ture. He would never learn to apply him- 
self with seriousness in later life." 

The reason of this advice is good, but the 
advice itself is bad. The spirit of the old 
schoolmaster's advice can be recommended, 
for the acquisition of knowledge is indeed a 
serious thing and should be taken seriously, 
but the professor's logic is perverse. It is 
true enough that the time will come when 
children must learn to apply themselves 

147 



148 OUR CHILDREN. 

seriously, but that is no reason why children 
should not acquire playfully as much knowl- 
edge as they possibly can. Would it be 
right to prevent mental growth? Certainly 
not! On the contrary, mental growth 
should be fostered by all means in our 
power. Our aim, however, must not be to 
change the acquisition of knowledge into 
sport, but to utilize the plays of the child for 
the higher ends of education. 

It is a design of nature to let the life of 
adult creatures be foreshadowed in the 
games of the young; and educators are 
bound to take the hint. 

The plays of children should not be 
simply a waste of time, but ought to be util- 
ized for furthering their intellectual life. 
They should serve higher purposes than 
merely to keep the little folk out of mis- 
chief. The old schoolmaster's maxim, 
therefore, is wrong, although his intentions 
may be appreciated; and we must let the 
child learn playfully as much as possible. 

Let the letters of the alphabet appear on 
the child 's toys ; let him become familiar with 



PLAYFUL INSTRUCTION. 149 

the various pursuits of life in his games; 
let his little hands become accustomed to the 
shovel, the pick-ax, the drill, the plane, and, 
if certain precautions are taken, also the 
knife, the scissors, and the compasses. Let 
him hear in great outlines and in the 
simplest words the stories of invention, the 
deeds of heroes, and the feats of discoverers. 
When the time comes for him to apply him- 
self with greater concentration upon school 
work he will be better prepared for it. The 
exertion will be easier for him, his labors 
will be lessened, and he will pass through 
his studies more joyfully than the boys to 
whom, for the mere purpose of teaching 
them the seriousness of learning, the ac- 
quisition of useful knowledge is made irk- 
some. 

Seriousness in the performance of duties 
is of great importance in life, but serious- 
ness is nothing if it is not guided by intel- 
ligence and accompanied by zeal. Our 
young folk, in order to leam to apply them- 
selves, must be taught to love work and be 
anxious to do something. Their enthu- 



150 OUR CHILDREN. 

siasm must be roused and their endeavors 
must be guided at an early age. 

For this purpose the kindergarten has 
been invented and is doing splendid work. 

No doubt that there are kindergartens 
which are not conducted in the right spirit. 
Instead of lifting the children up to a high- 
er level and helping them to understand the 
significance of life, some of the teachers 
stoop to them and let childishness have full 
sway. Instead of teaching the little folk 
playfully how to work, giving them glimpses 
of truth and the elements of right conduct, 
they dissipate them by idle plays and foster 
the spirit of sport. But in all innovations 
it is natural that mistakes will be made, and 
we need not for that reason reject the whole 
system. 

The kindergarten is a great advance in 
our educational methods; and when public 
kindergartens shall be instituted all over the 
country we may expect a decided and notice- 
able improvement of the race accompanied 
by an increase of intelligence and a decrease 
of crime. 



PLAYFUL INSTRUCTION. 151 

In a former number of one of our best 
magazines/ an educational writer, appar- 
ently a grammar-school teacher who took a 
dislike to the pupils, and perhaps also to 
the principal, of a special kindergarten, 
condemns the whole system for its lack of 
seriousness. She claims that the kindergar- 
ten children expect interesting stories and 
not instruction, they want amusement, and 
refuse to pay attention; they go to school 
to play, not to work. 

Granting that there are kindergartens 
which are not yet conducted with the neces- 
sary seriousness and that mistakes are made, 
we must also know that seeds sometimes 
fall by the wayside or on rock. If there 
are some kindergartens that fail to produce 
the right results, this is no reason for doing 
away with the method altogether. 

The kindergarten is not for play, but for 
playfully imparting lessons, and the main 
thing to be taught must be method; method 
in small things, in games, in behavior, and 
in human activity generally. Far from 

1 The Atlantic Monthly, March, 1899, pp. 358-366. 



152 OUR CHILDREN. 

abolishing the kindergarten, we would advo- 
cate its extension and the introduction of 
certain of its methods into the high schools 
and universities. 

The gist of the educational problem is 
this: Teach the methods of work and the 
elements of any science or art, not in a dry 
and abstract manner, but by infusing enthu- 
siasm into the pupils. Lessons can be made 
interesting by pointing out the connection 
which the object of instruction has with 
life by showing its value in the economy of 
human society, and indicating the wants 
which it serves. Pupils must feel the thrill 
which the inventors and scholars feel in 
their attempts at making discoveries and 
solving the various riddles of life. 

The kindergarten method will accomplish 
miracles in the field of education. It is a 
new dispensation, a dispensation of love, of 
voluntary good will, stimulating the springs 
that work from within, which must replace 
the old dispensation of the rod, the law that 
enforces virtue by punishments and makes 
noble and good aspirations a burden. 



PLAYFUL INSTRUCTION. 153 

A spiritual sunshine should spread over 
all exercises of the kindergarten, but for 
that reason there need be no dillydallying 
with toys. The teacher must never lose 
sight of the ultimate aim, which is the build- 
ing up of character. She herself must 
therefore at once be earnest and cheerful, 
qualities which it is by no means impossible 
to combine, and while she keeps her chil- 
dren buoyant and joyful, she must not fail 
to impress them with the importance of 
duty, of application, of seriousness. 

It might be an improvement in the sys- 
tem of the kindergarten if it were not ex- 
clusively in the hands of women, and if at 
least from time to time the influence of male 
teachers could be brought to bear upon 
children. 

Old-fashioned teachers who still cling to 
the method of rendering lessomi tedious, 
must, from sheer prejudice, have become 
blind to the results that can be obtained in 
this way ; for it is remarkable how persever- 
ing and patient children can be when they 
are interested in a certain kind of work. 



154 OUK CHILDREN. 

The difference between a genius and a 
pedant consists exactly in this, that the gen- 
ius performs his work playfully, while the 
pedant groans under the drudgery of his 
task. No doubt the pedant 's work would be 
preferable, if its worth were to be measured 
by the resistance overcome, but the fact is 
that the work of the genius always increases 
in excellence according to the ease with 
which it is accomplished. 

Genius is sometimes looked upon as a 
mystery, but there is no mystery about it. 
While it is difficult and often impossible to 
account for the appearance of genius in spe- 
cial cases, because it crops out where we least 
expect it, its nature in and of itself is no 
mystery. The soul of a genius consists of 
motor ideas which are correct representa- 
tions of things in the objective world and of 
the work to be performed. They interact 
without the laborious effort of conscious 
concentration. They act with machine-like 
accuracy, so as to allow all attention to be 
concentrated upon the main purpose of the 
work and not uj^on its details. A genius 



PLAYFUL INSTRUCTION. 155 

originates partly by inheriting a disposition 
for easily acquiring certain functions, or 
generally by possessing the knack of view- 
ing the world correctly. Whatever may be 
the cause of genius, it certainly shows itself 
in the playful ease with which work of 
great importance is performed. It would 
be wrong to think that a genius need not 
work, for a genius as a rule is a great 
worker, but he enjoys his work and can 
therefore accomplish more than those who 
constantly remain conscious of the serious- 
ness of their labors. 

Genius is instinct on a higher plane. 
Certain inherited dispositions are probably 
indispensable for producing a genius of a 
certain kind and it may be that an educator 
can do nothing when they are absolutely ab- 
sent. Nevertheless much can be done by a 
careful education. The impressions of 
children who, in a certain line of activity, 
see nothing but the right methods from their 
very babyhood, will be so organized that 
from their unconscious depths up to the con- 
scious surface of their soul, they will be pre- 



156 OUR CHILDREN. 

determined to hit naturally the right mode 
of action. The child of a musician, for in- 
stance, who has never heard anything but 
good music, and has playfully acquired since 
his very babyhood the various experiences 
of touch by contact with the keys of a piano, 
will naturally become a virtuoso. He will 
naturally find the right harmony, and the 
great wealth of melody that unconsciously 
slumbers in his early recollections will form 
a source of living tone-images, which upon 
the least provocation will well up automat- 
ically and engender new combinations of 
harmonious melodies that, through the in- 
fluence of other conditions, may possess a 
character of their own. 

What is true of music is true of poetry, 
oratory, all arts, the sciences, handicrafts, 
and industrial pursuits. The condition of 
genius is a ready and automatic interaction 
of a sufficient number of clear and correct 
thought images, or representative pictures, 
which must be brought under the control of 
a guiding purpose. 



PLAYFUL INSTRUCTION. 157 

Mr. Nicola Tesla's lecture before the 
Commercial Club of Chicago (May 14, 1899) 
was of special interest to the psychologist. 
He dwelt at length on the vividness of his 
visual conceptions which appeared before 
his eye like real things. Thus he would, 
when speaking of a cat, see a real cat; or 
when thinking of a machine, see a machine 
in all its details and in accurate proportions 
so plainly as to enable him to make meas- 
urements. This condition was oppressive 
to him in childhood and early youth, so long 
as he could not control it; and he felt re- 
lieved as if ridding himself of a nightmare 
when with increasing strength in his riper 
youth he succeeded in gaining control over 
the appearance and disappearance of these 
images. 

The whole method of making education 
irksome is wrong. It reminds one of the 
Gothamites who, according to the principle 
that we should do the disagreeable part of 
the task first, unloaded the wood from their 
wagons by pulling out the lowest trunks 
first, which they did with great difficulty; 



158 OUR CHILDREN. 

and they were delighted that by and by the 
work grew easier. They rejoiced when the 
last pieces could be simply taken off with- 
out trouble. 

Why not begin to teach children without 
causing them trouble from the beginning? 
All learning is a pleasure, and our teachers 
will find that it is unnecessary to make in- 
struction irksome to children during their 
school years. Acquisition of knowledge is 
a growth of soul, and our children ought to 
feel the joy of mental growth. There need 
be no fear that their minds will be dwarfed 
thereby. On the contrary, they will devel- 
op all the better, as plants that are trans- 
planted from a barren land to fertile soil, 
or from the shade to the sun, and when the 
time arrives in which some great purpose 
will demand special concentration, the grow- 
ing boy will apply himself with all the vigor 
of his youthful ambition. 

A youth will be more confident of success 
in life if he has been playfully made accus- 
tomed to its serious duties and to their diffi- 
culties, and he will thereby acquire a buoy- 



PLAYFUL INSTRUCTION. 15^ 

ancy which under the present conditions of 
education is rare. We must, however, see 
to it that the seriousness of work, far from 
suffering from playful instruction, shall be 
intensified and strengthened by it. 

There is another method of imparting a 
serious spirit to our children than by en- 
countering them with frowns or making wry 
faces at them when they do not sufficiently 
appreciate the gravity of their duties and 
school lessons : it is to show them the grav- 
ity and the purpose of their work. Gravity 
of purpose can very well be combined with 
a playful enthusiasm in which the purpose 
is accomplished. Let us not destroy the 
buoyancy of youth by installing gravity in 
the wrong place. It is remarkable how 
playfully and how joyously, and with what 
intense endurance a boy will work, if he has 
a purpose. 



RATIONALISM IN THE NURSERY 

When rationalism, as a religious move- 
ment, first dawned on the world, it was ex- 
aggerated to such an extent and carried into 
such improper fields, that it became ridicu- 
lous as a theory and a religion. Reason, 
however, we must remember, is the most es- 
sential feature of the human soul, and the 
proper training of reason is indispensable. 
It is of such importance that it ought to be- 
gin at an early date, and the application of 
reason should extend to all the questions of 
life, secular and religious. 

As to the use of reason in religion we 
must distinguish between what is rational 
and rationalistic. The rational ought to be 
welcome, while the rationalistic is a misap- 
plication of the rational. 

There are some great religious teachers, 
such as St. Augustine and Luther, who un- 
qualifiedly declare that religion must from 

160 



RATIONALISM. 161 

its very nature appear irrational to us. 
They claim that reason has no place in re- 
ligion, and must not be allowed to have any- 
thing to do with it. The ultimate basis of 
a religious conviction, they urge, is not 
knowledge but belief, — a view which in its 
utmost extreme is tersely expressed in the 
famous sentence, Credo quia absiirdum, — 
* ' I believe it because it is absurd. ' ' In op- 
position to this one-sided conception of the 
nature of religion, rationalists arose who at- 
tempted to cleanse religion of all irrational 
elements, and their endeavors have been 
crowned with great results. We owe to 
their efforts the higher development of re- 
ligion, and must acknowledge that they were 
among the heroes who liberated us from the 
bondage of superstition. 

Nevertheless, the rationalistic movement, 
or that movement in history which goes by 
the name of Rationalism, is as one-sided as 
its adversary. Without any soul for po- 
etry, its apostles removed from the holy leg- 
ends the miraculous as well as the supernat- 
ural, and were scarcely aware of how pro- 



1C2 OUR CHILDREN. 

saic, flat, and insipid religion became under 
this treatment. On the one hand they re- 
ceived the accounts of the Bible in sober 
earnestness like historical documents; on 
the other hand they did not recognize that 
the main ideas presented in religious writ- 
ings were of such a nature as to need the 
dress of myth. We know now that the 
worth and value of our religious books does 
not depend upon their historical accuracy, 
but upon the moral truths which they con- 
vey. We do not banish fairy-tales from the 
nursery because we have ceased to believe 
in fairies and ogres. These stories are in 
their literal sense absurd and impossible, 
yet many of them contain gems of deep 
thought; many of them contain truths of 
great importance. The rationalistic move- 
ment started from wrong premises and pur- 
sued its investigations on erroneous princi- 
ples. Our rationalists tried to correct the 
letter and expected to thus purify the spirit. 
But they soon found it beyond their power 
to restore the historical truth, and in the 
meantime lost sight of the spirit. They 



RATIONALISM. 103 

were like tlie dissector who seeks to dis- 
cover tlie secret of life by cutting a living 
organism into pieces ; or like a chemist, who 
with the purpose of investigating the nature 
of a clock, analyses the chemical elements of 
its wheels in his alembic. The meaning of 
religious truth cannot be found simply by 
rationalizing the miraculous element in the 
holy legends of our religious traditions. 

Rationalism is a natural phase of the evo- 
lution of religious thought, but it yields no 
final solution of the problem. In a similar 
way our classical historians attempted in a 
certain phase of the development of criti- 
cism to analyse Homer and the classical leg- 
ends. They rationalized them by removing 
the miracles and other irrational elements, 
and naively accepted the rest as history. 
The historian of to-day has given up this 
method and simply presents the classical 
legends in the shape in which they were cur- 
rent in old Greece. Legends may be unhis- 
torical, what they tell may never have hap- 
pened, yet they are powerful realities in the 
development of a nation. They may be even 



1G4 OUR CHILDREN. 

more powerful than historical events, for 
they depict ideals, and ideals possess a form- 
ative faculty. They arouse the enthusiasm 
of youth and shape man's actions, and must 
therefore be regarded as among the most po- 
tent factors in practical life. 

We regard the rationalistic treatment of 
Bible stories as a mistake, yet for that rea- 
son we do not accept the opposite view of 
the intrinsic irrationality of religion. We 
do not renounce reason; we do not banish 
rational thought from the domain of reli- 
gion. Although we regard any attempt at 
rationalizing religious legends as a grave 
blunder, we are nevertheless far from con- 
sidering reason as anti-religious. On the 
contrary, we look upon reason as the spark 
of divinity in man. Reason is that faculty 
by virtue of which we can say that man has 
been created in the image of God. Without 
reason man would be no higher than the 
beast of the field. Without rational criti- 
cism religion would be superstition pure and 
simple, and we demand that religion shall 
never come in conflict with reason. Reli- 



RATIONALISM. 165 

gion must be in perfect accord with science ; 
it must never come into collision with ra- 
tional thought. Reason after all remains 
the guiding-star of our life. Without rea- 
son our existence would be shrouded in dark- 
ness. 

If children hear stories that are irrational 
there is no need of telling them flatly that 
the story is not true, but it will be wise to 
ask the question, Is that possible? Chil- 
di'en are sure to take certain things as facts 
without thinking of applying criticism. 
Their little souls are as yet blanks. 
How is it possible to expect in them the crit- 
ical attitude of a scholar? If children see 
pictures of angels, or devils, or fairies, they 
will believe them to be as they see them, 
without questioning the possibility of such 
beings. 

It was characteristic of a child's mind 
when a little three year old boy once asked 
one of his aunties, '' Have you ever seen an 
angel? " and she replied, '' No, have you? " 
" Yes," he said confidently, '' in my picture 
book." That things can be pictured which 



166 OUR CHILDREN. 

are not realities, is an idea that has not as 
yet entered the mind of a young child. And 
it will be wise not to tell him directly that 
certain pictures are unrealities, but to guide 
his opinion and help him to form his own 
judgment. 

Children are liable to lose the moral of a 
fairy tale if they are told at once that fairies 
and ogres are unrealities. It will for a time 
be sufficient to tell them it is a story and 
never mind whether it actually happened or 
not. And if the moral of the story now and 
then finds application in their experiences 
they will learn to appreciate it, and yet dis- 
tinguish between poetry and reality. They 
will acquire a taste for poetry without fall- 
ing a prey to romanticism. 

There is a difference between true and 
real. A thing is real that is concrete and ac- 
tual ; history is real, and all things real are 
instances of general laws. A truth is the 
recognition and correct knowledge of a gen- 
eral law ; and the lesson of a general law in 
the moral world may sometimes be better 
set forth in an invented story than in inci- 



RATIONALISM. 167 

dents that have actually happened. In this 
sense a story, a myth, a legend, may be un- 
historical, unreal, and even absurdly impos- 
sible, and yet be true in its significance. 
Children do not, of course, at once appreci- 
ate this distinction between truth and histor- 
ical actuality, and one of my little boys for 
a long time refused to listen to '' stories that 
were not true," as he said. He objected to 
fairy tales as not being based upon facts, 
preferring to hear the account of the inven- 
tion of steam engines or of the landing of 
the Pilgrims. It almost seemed for a long 
time as though he had no sense for poetry; 
but by and by he learned to like certain fairy 
tales whose spirit he appreciated — for in- 
stance, of the boy who knew no fear and 
who, when he went abroad to learn what 
fear was, gained a kingdom. 

Parents must develop the critical sense 
of their children without destroying poetry 
and the enjoyment of fiction. If children 
prefer the one or the other extreme, let them 
freely develop it and fear not that they will 
become over-credulous or over-critical, that 



168 OUR CHILDREN. 

tliey will become superstitious through a be- 
lief in fairy tales, or prosaic on account of 
their objection to stories that are not true. 
Every child passes through successive 
phases in its mental development, and it will 
only assimilate the impressions and informa- 
tion for which its budding mind is ready. 
If these phases show an occasional onesided- 
ness, parents need not worry, for mankind, 
at large, also had its phases, and the reli- 
gious evolution of the race necessarily 
passed through the mythological and dog- 
matic period. 

The same rule that applies to fairy tales 
holds good in the realm of religious legends 
and stories. The parents' rule might be: 
Give the children every chance of forming 
their own opinion, and let them acquire in- 
formation of all kinds in whatever way life 
may offer it to them. Let children go to 
churches, witness religious processions, at- 
tend Sunday-school, but preserve under all 
conditions their independence of judgment 
without directly forestalling the decision to 
which they are ultimately liable to come. 



RATIONALISM. 1C9 

Parents who wish to insist on a rational 
comi^rehension of religious truths need not 
be in a hurry to influence the souls of their 
little ones. If they give them outright the 
results of free investigation instead of 
merely stimulating their critical powers by 
questions and suggestions, they are liable 
to make them shallow, and instead of mak- 
ing them rational will make them rational- 
istic. 

One of my little boys, now eight years old, 
recently learned to skate on the ice. He 
could do it so long as he remained uncon- 
scious of himself, but he gave up at once af- 
ter his first accident, because the thought of 
falling frightened him. When I told him 
that he could do it if he only had confidence 
in himself, he answered, '* Isn't there a truth 
in the story of St. Peter's walking on the 
Sea of Galilee ? He sank when he lost faith, 
and he walked on the water when he had 
the confidence that he could do it." He 
added at once, " I do not believe that he 
walked on the water, but the story is good, 
isn't iti " 



170 OUR CHILDREN. 

As to credulity in the common walks of 
life, it will always be wise to distinguish be- 
tween what actually is true and what a per- 
son has stated to be true, or what he may 
believe to be true. The distinction is sub- 
tle to a child's mind in the beginning, but 
as soon as he understands it, he will utilize 
it and it will become a trait of character that 
in future life may be of great importance. 
He will learn to respect the right of others 
to believe as they please, although he may 
come to the conclusion that the belief itself 
has no foundation and is unacceptable to 
himself. 



MUTUAL EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 

An only child is apt to be spoiled, and 
why? Because lie does not have the benefit 
of the mutual education that brothers and 
sisters in their common plays as well as in 
their quarrels naturally bestow upon one an- 
other. If he is not self-willed, and if his 
peculiarities do not manifest themselves in 
naughtiness, he will as a rule be over-sensi- 
li^.e^__ which in later life may prove almost 
more disastrous; for he will be liable to fret 
without any cause when others unwillingly 
or unwittingly offend him. 

Parents that have several children should 
not be grieved if their boys, or even their 
girls, sometimes quarrel among themselves. 
There are few brothers who would not now 
and then come to blows, and there is no 
harm done in their childish quarrels, so long 
as they are kept within proper limits, and 
parents should interfere as little as possible, 



172 OUR CHILDREN. 

except to counterbalance the greater strength 
of the elder ones, to prevent their having 
toys which might turn out to be dangerous 
weapons, and in general to see to it that no 
serious harm be done. There is no better 
system of education than that which springs 
from the conflict of interests that originates 
within the sphere of the children's own ex- 
periences. 

No teachings in words can better explain 
to a child that the rights of others must be 
respected, than the practical experiences, be 
they ever so trivial, which give meaning to 
the moral exhortations of the golden rule and 
of practising justice. The child must feel 
the resistance of others, in order to learn 
that there are limits imposed upon us in so- 
ciety by the rights of our fellows. There- 
fore, if parents see their children quarrelling 
they should not be anxious about them. 
Every blow that one little brother gives or 
receives is a moral lesson which will bear 
fruit in time. 

While the quarrels of children are not to 
be regarded as an evil, they should not be 



MUTUAL EDUCATION. 173 

fostered or produced. They should only be 
suffered, and parents should not be alarmed 
at occasional outbreaks of anger. Far from 
fostering quarrels, parents should see to it 
that their children love and respect one an- 
other, and it is easy enough for them to do 
so. They should never in the presence of 
one child speak slightingly of their other 
children, but always in respectful and lov- 
ing terms. Every word of contempt or ill- 
will, even of deserved reproach, if listened 
to by a brother or sister, sinks much more 
deeply into their hearts than adult people 
as a rule are apt to believe. It is remem- 
bered, and though it may remain unnoticed 
for a long time, it will finally come out in 
one shape or another when least expected. 
It may be true that most of the grudges and 
ill-will that brothers sometimes show one 
another are due to the carelessness of pa- 
rents who reprove the little fellows in the 
presence of their brothers. Parents, there- 
fore, ought to make it a rule to treat child- 
ren throughout in the presence of their 
brothers and sisters, and also of strangers. 



174 OUR CHILDREN. 

not very differently from adult people. 
Whatever reproaches have to be made ought 
to be done, at least as far as possible, in pri- 
vate, and not for the purpose of humiliating 
the child. 

Children are apt to scold one another, but 
their words have not the same weight that 
those of parents and nurses have. Their 
revilings, therefore, cannot do the same 
harm. On the contrary, if parents or 
nurses show their disapproval of using 
names, bickerings in the nursery will be re- 
membered as deterring examples. 

When little children interfere with the 
plays of their older brothers and sisters, 
taking away their toys and running off with 
them, the older children naturally grow in- 
dignant and are apt at once to beat their 
weaker playmates. Then of course it is 
time to interfere and give them a lesson in 
patience. And the best method to keep 
older cnildren in good humor, is to teach 
them to look upon their smaller companions 
with the eyes of grown up people. When 
a baby of two years runs away with her four 



MUTUAL EDUCATION. 175 

year old sister's doll, it is better to let lier 
carry off lier sj)oils, and taking the elder 
child in your arms, to say: " Now let us 
watch baby and see what she is doing with 
dolly. I'll see to it that she does not break 
it. Now look how she carries the doll. 
Would any mamma carry her baby by the 
leg? She does not yet know how to treat 
babies, but we will teach her. You are the 
elder, you must tell her how." 

Possibl}^ for the first time children may 
not prove amenable, but by and by they will 
learn to take fatherly or motherly interest 
in the queer ways of their younger sisters 
and brothers, and that will help them to bear 
with their smaller companions if they un- 
duly interfere with the rights of their eld- 
ers and provoke their anger. 

Of course, children should always be 
watched, especially if they have dangerous 
toys in their hands, such as iron tools 
which may easily become weapons, but at 
the same time they ought to enjoy their lib- 
erty as much as possible, and parents should 
give them a chance to educate one another 



17G OUR CHILDREN. 

by mutual assistance and interest — as well 
as by friction. 

I remember a children's j^arty given in 
the days of my own childhood in celebration 
of the birthday of one of my little friends. 
Our host had received a game called "Rey- 
nard the Fox," and he had invited all his 
little comrades to play the new game. But 
he had cleverly arranged it so that none of 
his guests had the least chance of winning, 
and he alone bore off all the honors and 
prizes of the day. He was an only child, 
and that, too, without a mother who might 
have checked his ambitious plans, and the 
outcome of the children 's party was general 
dissatisfaction and finally an actual rebel- 
lion against the host who tried to usurp all 
the power. At last his father interfered to 
restore order, and settled the dispute in a 
manner which was not to the taste of the 
spoiled child. When I recounted the story 
at home and informed my parents about the 
little tricks which my friend had used to in- 
sure his victories, they pointed out to me 
the lesson that the host should always look 



MUTUAL EDUCATION. 177 

to the interests of his guests, and that it was 
a matter of honor on his part to let them be 
satistied and go home with the pleasant 
feeling of having been well entertained. 
The vanity of gaining all the honors of the 
day spoiled the birthday party of my little 
friend for himself and others. Had he been 
wise enough to suffer his guests to gain all 
the prizes, he would have increased their 
friendship and would probably have en- 
joyed the day much more than he hoped to 
do and might have done by winning all the 
prizes, even if his guests had not demurred. 
I do not remember whether as the host of 
a children's party I was better than my 
spoiled friend, but I am sure that it was an 
experience which made a deep impression 
on my mind, and it seems to me that par- 
ents should improve all the opportunities 
they have of guiding children's inclinations 
in the right way by utilizing their own ex- 
periences. 



FEAR AND CIRCUMSPECTION 

It happens that children sometimes are 
frightened by phantoms of their own ima- 
gination, and being naturally weak and 
feeling that they are unable to protect them- 
selves, may at the idea of a fancied danger 
fall into hysterics. What is to be done if 
such a state supervenes, or if symptoms ap- 
pear which indicate its approach, — a state 
in which the child is overpowered by all 
kinds of presentiments and would be imper- 
vious to argument *? 

The best plan is not to deny at once the 
reality of the imagination which is the im- 
mediate cause of the sudden fright for that 
fancied fearful object is a reality to the 
child, and to deny it would be to cut of£ all 
means of curing it. The best way is to con- 
sider it temporarily as being real, or at 
least possible, and accept the state of things 

imagined. Place yourself in the child's po- 
ns 



FEAR AND CIRCUMSPECTION. 179 

sition, and thence start for further o^oera- 
tions. That is the first condition which in- 
sures the child's confidence, so that it will 
be willing to follow you, and you will then 
have easy play to examine the state of af- 
fairs, which will of course result in the dis- 
covery that there was no cause for fear. 

A few examples will illustrate the case. 

A little girl frequently fancied she saw 
bears and tigers whenever she ha]3pened to 
awake in the night. Presumably she 
dreamed of some danger, may be on account 
of having eaten too much for supper or hav- 
ing eaten the wrong kind of food. At any 
rate, she frequently awoke crying in the 
night, and in her fear interpreted the dim 
outlines of a dress or a curtain as a fearful 
beast that was about to attack her. The 
best thing to do is to deal tenderly with such 
fancies and remove the child as far as pos- 
sible from the object that has caused her 
excitement. Then, if you can do so with- 
out disturbing the other children, light the 
lamp and let it fall full on the thing that 
has given rise to her fear. Be slow, and 



180 OUR CHILDREN. 

express your opinion first as a kind of pre- 
liminary assiunption that the bear may 
after all be mamma's skirt or the curtain 
moving in the draft; and when this com- 
forting probability is understood, follow up 
your advantage and declare it to be a good 
joke that a harmless piece of cloth should 
look like a fearful animal. Make the child 
smile at the incongruity of her fancy, and 
her laugh will cure the horror of the dream 
and dispel the nightmare as sunshine dis- 
solves the mist. 

One day I walked with one of my little 
boys along a wooded creek. It was winter, 
and the trees were leafless and dry. Now 
it happened that a trunk of a tree which 
had lost its crown and was encircled by 
strong vines, looked, from a certain posi- 
tion, like a man, or rather like a tramp (for 
he looked very ragged) bending over a bro- 
ken bicycle. The vines were so queerly 
shaped that the illusion was almost perfect. 
My little boy stood aghast for a moment. 
*' There is a bad man," he said, "with a bi- 
cycle," and he pointed to the strange sight. 



FEAR AND CIRCUMSPECTION. 181 

I could not help at once tracing the figure 
to which he referred, but I knew at the same 
time that it was a tree and not a real man, 
for a man would not have stood so motion- 
less as did that weird, ragged looking figure 
in the valley. The fear of the little boy was 
great, and he did not know what to do, — 
whether to run away or to hide, and as his 
imagination was easily worked up I felt 
that there was danger of an hysterical out- 
break. The first thing to be done was to 
remain very calm myself. Calmness pro- 
duces calmness, as irritation will produce 
irritation. Mental states by imitation are 
as contagious as diseases. Now I told the 
little fellow to stand perfectly still and 
watch that tramp in the valley. At the 
same time I took him in my arms, which of 
course alleviated his immediate fears, and 
while he watched that tramp-like figure I 
called his attention to the fact that he stood 
perfectly still and did not move, except as 
a tree will in a gentle breeze. When he had 
grown calmer, I proposed to walk towards 
the man and see what he did. But the lit- 



182 OUR CHILDREN. 

tie fellow was still too much afraid and 
said, ''Let us go away as quickly as we 
can." But that seemed to me very unde- 
sirable. Although we were on our way 
home, I saw clearly that I had first to dis- 
illusion him as to the cause of his fear. As 
he would not walk towards the strange fig- 
ure directly, I thought it wisest to approach 
it indirectly, and while we moved some 
steps to the side, the tree ceased to look 
like a man and appeared more like a tree. 
At the same time the figure remained mo- 
tionless as before. This increased the cour- 
age of the boy and I at once took advantage 
of it. "I don't believe it is a man," said I, 
*'let us go and see." He still objected. I 
again changed our position to a place which 
presented another view of that queer tree, 
and the confidence of the boy grew more and 
more. The hysterical condition disap- 
peared completely and there remained only 
a certain awe of the weird appearance ; but 
it seemed to me advisable to dispel that awe 
too and leave no trace of it. Even now it 
seemed to me advisable not to approach the 



FEAR AND CIRCUMSPECTION. 183 

tree directly and quickly, but slowly, as 
Indians would do when deer-stalking or 
stealing upon an enemy. The approach 
made in this careful way increased his con- 
fidence, for we stopped whenever new 
doubts arose which manifested themselves 
in renewed hesitation; and at last I said ''it 
would be fun if the wild man would turn 
out to be merely a tree stump. Really, I 
believe it is only a tree. What do you 
think?" And he thought that it was really 
a tree and his fright changed slowly into 
fear, then into awe, then into circumspec- 
tion, then into a strong suspicion of the 
causelessness of his fear, and at last into 
good humor at the situation. When we 
came to the place and stood before the leaf- 
less tree, which had no longer any resem- 
blance to a man or a bicycle, we had a hearty 
laugh and I did not fail to impress on the 
boy the ridiculousness of the situation. 
Lest the experience should vanish from his 
memory, I sometimes reminded him of the 
incident, recommending him in all similar 
cases first to look closely at the frightful 



184 OUR CHILDREN. 

apparition. Perhaps then it will dissolve 
into nothing, just as an imagined highway- 
man changed into a rotten stump. 

Another instance of fear that I found 
necessary to allay in the same little boy, 
happened on the farm to which w^e were ac- 
customed to go. When he first encountered 
a pig, he was so frightened at its grunt that 
he could not be induced to walk into the 
yards in which the swine were kept with 
the cows and sheep. As it did not seem to 
me advisable to yield to his fear, I carried 
him to the fence on my arm, where he felt 
safe, and explained to him that pigs are 
very much afraid of men and even of little 
boys if they only courageously hunted them. 
So when a pig approached the fence I drove 
it away, which gave the little boy a great 
deal of pleasure to see his old enemy put to 
flight. I at once made use of his elated 
state of mind and pursued the pig. When 
he saw that the pigs were really cowards, I 
put him on the ground and gave him a stick 
and let him give chase himself. First he 
would not go to the ground; but having re- 



FEAR AND CIRCUMSPECTION. 185 

peatedly witnessed the wild flight of chased 
pigs, he ventured the feat, stick in hand, 
still clinging, however, to his papa's hand. 
Of course, I took care that the first pigs he 
met with were not too large and that they 
would quickly retire at our approach. The 
little boy's courage grew with his success, 
and after a few repeated pig hunts he lost 
all the fear he had entertained, and I now 
found it necessary to give the boys, him as 
well as his little brother, a warning not to 
be too bold with pigs when they were alone, 
because the big ones might not be quite so 
cowardly as they thought, and might turn 
out to be ugly. 

Make it a rule never to excite fear in 
children, and never show fear yourself in 
their presence. On the contrary, set chil- 
dren an example of calm behavior in in- 
stances where either you yourself become 
involved in an actually perilous situation or 
where the child's imagination sees a mere 
show of danger. 

Unfortunately most of the help employed 
in a house, especially the servants in the 



186 OUR CHILDREN. 

kitchen, show an extraordinary fear of 
mice, which is transferred to the children. 
If a child observes but once a scene of ex- 
citement, because a little mouse happens to 
be heard, parents will have a great deal of 
trouble to eradicate the evil effect. This 
impression will probably last forever, and 
can only be counteracted by carefully super- 
adding the ridiculousness of such fear. 

The elimination of fear in education 
should not, however, promote audacity and 
f oolhardiness ; on the contrary we must be- 
gin at an early age to caution children and 
make them look out for and anticipate dan- 
gers. 

When taking a walk with children, it is 
advisable to think aloud, and to tell them 
why we walk here and there, why we look 
out when crossing the tracks, or crossing 
streets; and to point out to them the dan- 
gers that must be avoided. Circumspection 
must be one of the fundamental ideas in a 
child's mind, especially in our days when 
civilization begins to grow more and more 
complex. 



FEAR AND CIKCUMSPECTION. 187 

If you have electric wires in the house, 
either for lighting or for bells, it is advisa- 
ble to improve the occasion whenever a re- 
pair is made, or whenever an opportunity 
may offer itself, to show to children the 
sparks that appear when wires touch. If 
the current is too weak to do any harm, it 
is even advisable to let children touch wires 
and receive a shock. At any rate, they 
ought to be informed of the dangers to 
which they expose themselves in touching 
wires. They ought to know that as the 
electricity in the wires of a bell are weak, so 
the electricity in the wires of a street rail- 
way are very powerful and would, if 
touched, unfailingly kill a man. It is not 
exactly necessary to tell children the terri- 
ble accidents that frequently happen, but 
it is necessary to give them full information 
about what might happen. When they 
grow older, attaining an age at which the 
imagination is no longer apt to be over- 
strung, they should also be told of the ac- 
cidents and how they happen, so that they 
will learn to avoid them. 



188 OUR CHILDREN. 

It will be useful under all circumstances 
to impress short rules upon the minds of 
the children, never to touch a wire that 
might happen to dangle from a pole, and 
never to step on a wire that might touch 
the ground, and the connection of which 
cannot be traced. It might be harmless, 
but it might be a live wire. 

The same rules, mutatis mutandis, apply 
to innumerable other situations. If par- 
ents visit factories or machine shops with 
their children, as in my opinion they ought 
to do from time to time, they should give 
due warning not to touch any running ma- 
chinery and especially to be on the lookout 
with regard to belts. Before they approach 
the machinery they should watch it for a 
moment so as to know how far its sphere of 
danger reaches. In smithies and near fire- 
places of any kind, children must be taught 
never to step on iron, because even the 
dark-looking irons may still be hot, and it 
will be instructive to touch with a piece of 
wood some hot iron which, having lost its 
reddish blaze, appears to the uninitiated eye 



FEAR AND CIRCUMSPECTION. 1B9 

quite harmless. The wood will quickly 
catch fire, and the child should learn that 
if it stepped on that same iron the heat 
would soon burn through the shoe into the 
flesh, and perhaps to the bone. 

Of course, these little lessons in caution 
should not be given so as to make the chil- 
dren timid ; and, as a rule, it will be time to 
devote special attention to them as soon as 
the child has lost its natural fear. First 
teach children courage, then show them the 
need of circumspection. 



SANTA GLAUS 

There seems to be a period in the evolu- 
tion of the child in which it is given to be- 
lieving in the personification of ideas. I 
know a little boy to whom Santa Glaus, 
during a certain period of his life, was, and 
remained, in spite of all explanations, a 
real person whom he knew as well as his 
papa and his mamma. I tried to explain 
to him the meaning of Santa Glaus. I 
took occasion to tell him that all the various 
Ghristmas presents were given him by his 
parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and 
friends, and that they had to buy them in 
the stores. In this connection I saw fit to 
mention that the idea of Santa Glaus was 
simply an allegorical expression of the love 
of parents and grandparents who wished to 
give Ghristmas joy to good little children. 

The Ghristmas gifts are here; they are 
the realities which the children see, and on 

190 



SANTA CLAUS. 191 

these concrete things hangs their conviction 
of the reality of Santa Clans. 

Children are right from their standpoint, 
which views the reality back of an abstrac- 
tion in the allegory of personification. 

When I explained to the little fellow 
that Santa Claus was such love of par- 
ents and others as prompts them to give to 
children Christmas presents, the child un- 
derstood every word, and even appreciated 
the fact that every present must be paid for 
by somebody. Nevertheless, Santa Claus 
remained a real figure in his imagination 
and continued to play a most important part 
not only in his games, but also generally in 
his whole world-conception, so much so that 
his highest ambition was to become Santa 
Claus himself as soon as he grew up. 

A little incident will serve as an instance 
of how mature thoughts for a long time lie 
side by side with childlike conceptions. 
Once when the little boy asked me about de- 
tails of Santa Claus 's habitation and ma- 
chine shops, I again gave him the explana- 
tion of Santa Claus 's ideal nature, where- 



102 OUR CHILDREN. 

•apon the child said: "Yes, I know that 
Santa Clans means love of papas and 
mammas for their children, bnt I do not 
mean that kind of Santa Claus ; I now mean 
the real Santa Claus." 

The reply of the little fellow reminded 
me of the views of many adult children who 
do not as yet understand that all abstrac- 
tions are real. Thus they are still in need 
of the method of personification to make 
them appear real to their mind. 

There is among a certain class of educa- 
tors the notion prevalent that we ought to 
abolish in child education all the fairy tales 
and with them the dear old figure of Santa 
Claus. But I have observed that in the ab- 
sence of the traditional characters which by 
the experience of centuries have become 
typical representations of certain spiritual 
realities of life, children are apt to form 
their own personifications, which of course 
will be cruder, less poetical, and less defined 
than the old ones. While I gladly allow 
that the rationalizing influence should 
watch over the development of a child by 



SANTA CLAUS. ^^^ 

constantly keeping before his mind rational 
explanations of the various fairy tale fig- 
ures, I should not regard it as advisable to 
crush or cripple the child's imagination. 
We need not fear that it will not be cor- 
rected in time. I have the confidence that 
a child will naturally overcome the child- 
ishness of fairy-tale personifications, and 
we need not shock his mind by suddenly dis- 
niusioning him. The child mil overcome 
in later years the superstition of a literal 
acceptance of fairy tales and will preserve 
the poetry of the story. 

It is neither necessary nor advisable to 
pull out the first teeth because they have no 
roots and will not endure. According to 
the laws of nature the development of the 
second teeth begins before the first teeth 
fall out. In the realm of the spiritual de- 
velopment, therefore, we ought not to be 
zealotical iconoclasts; we need not pull out 
and violently remove that which is mmia- 
ture and temporary, but care ought to be 
taken that the germs of a higher concep- 
tion be planted and that at the disappear- 



194 OUR CHILDREN. 

ance of the old the new and more purified 
thought be ready to take its place. 

The little boy of whom I speak under- 
stood only in part what I told him about 
Santa Claus. He believed that he under- 
stood it all. He acquired an idea that pa- 
rental love, and children's joys, and the 
family reunion at the Christmas festival 
were great realities in life, but he did not 
see that in their presence the figure of what 
he called the real Santa Claus as a bodily 
being living in the Rocky Mountains and 
traveling over the country in his reindeer 
sleigh had become redundant — without how- 
ever having lost its significance. 

Is not the same true of mankind as a 
whole? The evolution of human civiliza- 
tion has also its fairy-tale period, and we 
are only now emerging from its fanciful 
visions. There are still many among us 
who believe that unless the letter of a myth 
be true there can be neither beauty nor 
truth in religion. They think, like genuine 
adult children, that if Santa Claus were not 
a real definite individual there could be no 



SANTA CLAUS. 195 

Christmas presents nor any true Christmas 
joy. Their belief in a God and Heaven is 
more like the children's belief in Santa 
Claus than a genuine faith in the grand 
realities that are symbolized in these names. 
Heaven and hell to many are not spiritual, 
but material; they are conceived, not as 
conditions, Ijut as places. 

Thinking men among the church people 
of the old stamp are often struck with the 
truth that God and immortality are part 
and parcel of our life and that they are 
traceable everywhere in reality itself. But 
then, like the little boy of whom I spoke 
before, they understand and accept the new 
light, and yet stick at the same time to the 
materialistic view. All the Christmas 
presents are due to the love of parents and 
friends, yet in addition to it there is an in- 
dividual person who provides for them, and 
he is the real Santa Claus. They grant 
that God is the eternal in the transient ; the 
immutable law in the changes of the phe- 
nomenal world; yet in addition claim that 
he may be an individual being. 



196 OUR CHILDREN. 

The conception of God is ultimately 
based on fact, but the notion that God is an 
individual being is an illusion ; and if think- 
ing people still cling to this error, it is as if a 
naturalist, traveling in the desert, explained 
to his fellow travelers the causes of a mir- 
age, yet they, having understood the whole 
explanation, would add : ' ' That may all be 
very true; the mirage as we see it is due to 
all these causes which we can plainly trace 
in diagrams and calculate according to the 
laws of the refraction of light in the differ- 
ent strata of the heated air, but that does 
not disprove the theory that there might be 
some real haven of peace, full of beauty and 
bliss, in that very same place where the mir- 
age appears. The cosmic order may be un- 
create and the condition of the wonderful 
harmony of the world, it may be God: yet 
this God might at the same time be a con- 
crete being and as much an individual 
ego-consciousness as we are. Further, 
heaven and hell may be conditions of the 
soul, but there may be also a heaven that is 
as real and concretely material a place as 



SANTA CLAUS. 197 

this earth is;" and then they believe that 
the spiritual reality of heaven and hell, as 
it exists in us, would be of no avail unless 
there were some material reality in addi- 
tion, unless they were geographical locali- 
ties on our own planet or somewhere else in 
space. Such people have not yet outgrown 
the mythological phase of their develop- 
ment, and, after a careful consideration of 
their state of mind, I have come to the con- 
clusion that they are still in need of a sen- 
sual conception of religious truths, and, as 
a rule, if they lost the belief in the letter, 
they would also lose the belief in the spirit, 
for their comprehension of things spiritual 
is as yet imdeveloped. 

The most important religious idea is the 
God-idea, and it is natural that this deep 
and intricate conception should cause great 
difficulties to the educator. 

The question arises, Would it be right to 
teach the child those childlike conceptions 
of the Deity wliich we ourselves no longer 
believe ; or shall we, with agnostics, tell them 
we do not know whether God exists or not; 



198 OUR CHILDREN. 

or, finally, shall we with freethinkers ridi- 
cule the belief as unworthy of credence ? 

Perhaps all these methods are somewhat 
faulty, and the best principle would be to 
let the children watch the performance of 
religious worship of various denominations, 
and when they ask about the significance of 
prayer, sermons, hymn-singing, thanksgiv- 
ings, and benedictions, give them at first an 
ex23lanation of the ideas which induce some 
people to go through these ceremonies and 
sometimes through strange rituals. If the 
children's interest in religious problems is 
aroused, tell them of other beliefs, includ- 
ing idolatrous practices and superstitions, 
which can easily be illustrated by pictures. 
But while imparting your information, be 
always careful not to present your own 
views ready made, but let the children work 
out the question for themselves. Give them 
such help as will render the solution of the 
various problems easier to them, but see to 
it that they do the thinking themselves. 

The question will soon be asked, "Does 
God exist I" and of course the children's 



SANTA CLAUS. 199 

God is an invisible individual who hovers in 
the air as he is pictured in Bible illustra- 
tions. A God such as the children believe 
in, of course, does not exist, but for that rea- 
son it would be very wrong to tell the child, 
*'No, God does not exist;" for while the 
child's idea of God is wrong, there are no- 
tions connected with it which are true. The 
child asks also whether or not there is an in- 
visible presence that watches him, whether 
or not his acts when he is alone remain con- 
cealed from the world, and here the difficulty 
appears to lay the foundation for a higher 
conception of God than is the popular view 
of the traditional personification. 

Meet the question, ''Does God exist?" by 
the counter question, "What do you under- 
stand by God?" and thus lead the child to a 
description of its childlike views, which will 
give you a chance to point out the true and 
to discard the false. 

A little chap of scarcely three years was 
once quite shocked when he heard that the 
air above us grew thinner and thiimer and 
that at last there was no air left. No one 



200 OUR CHILDREN. 

can breathe there and we should, if carried 
up, immediately die. The source of his 
anxiety became apparent when with sup- 
pressed tears he exclaimed in a state of ten- 
sion, "But, then the Good Lord must die?" 
"No, my boy," I said, "the Good Lord can- 
not die ; He has not a body as we have ; He 
has no Imigs ; He need not breathe in order 
to exist. His existence does not depend on 
a body like ours. He is not an individual 
as you are and as I am. If He were, He 
w^ould not be God. He is not a man. He is 
God." The child felt greatly relieved and 
it helped him to come a step nearer to the 
truth. 

Such occasional explanations should as a 
rule come only in response to questions, for 
then, and then alone, will they be appreci- 
ated. Eeligious instruction should consist 
mainly in setting the child's mind to think- 
ing and solving the problems that the child 
j^erceives himself. He will ask, "What does 
God want us to do?" which means for adult 
people, "What significance does the God- 
idea possess in human life ? ' ' And when the 



SANTA CLAUS. 201 

child answers this question in the child's 
language, that '*God wants us to be good," 
he will naturally come to the definition that 
''God is all that prompts to goodness." 

We can fairly abstain here from entering 
into further details because the individu- 
ality of the child will require much individu- 
alizing on this most important subject. All 
I would claim, however, is this, that a child 
— especially if his other education has been 
in lines analogous to those pointed out here 
— can be made to see (1) that God is present 
in everything that is good, (2) that God is 
the principle of goodness, (3) that this God 
is not an individual being but an eternal and 
ubiquitous presence; (4) that this God is 
everywhere, and not nowhere, that although 
He is not a material body. He is a most effec- 
tive reality and not a nonentity ; that He is 
not only good, but that His Goodness in- 
cludes that He is also formidable, as His 
goodness implies that badness leads to bad- 
ness and the sequence of sin is sin's curse. 
And lastly, that, be we ever so much alone, 
we yet always remain in the j)resence of 



202 OUR CHILDREN. 

God. All our actions persist in their effects, 
and we can nowhere and under no circum- 
stances escape the results of our acts. 

Children can be led up to these results and 
easily made to understand them without our 
entering into deep philosophical discussions. 
At the same time the corollaries of these 
views can be pointed out. Children that 
grow up under these impressions will remain 
reverent without being superstitious. They 
will naturally understand the right use of 
prayer. They will not pray for a change of 
weather, but for strength of heart; and al- 
though they may have been brought up to 
say grace before dinner, they will not pray 
with any expectation of changing the will of 
God. Their prayer will be a realization of 
self-control; it will be self-criticism exer- 
cised by suffering their acts to pass by in the 
review of a searching self-examination and 
will result in self-discipline, rendering them 
determined to pursue the right way of ac- 
tion. 

It will be advisable on general principles 
to let children know at an early age that, as 



SANTA CLAUS. 203 

there are different nations, so there are dif- 
ferent religions; and we must always be 
careful not to misrepresent others. We 
may say why we do not share other people 's 
views, but do not pronounce any condemna- 
tion without good and sufficient reasons. A 
comparison between religions will be very 
serviceable in educating the child's inde- 
pendent judgment. 

The right God-conception renders us more 
efficient in life ; it makes us independent and 
energetic. The wrong God-conception makes 
us superstitious and dependent. It is said 
that during the naval engagement of the 
Chinese-Japanese war the commander of 
one of the great Chinese vessels went down 
into his cabin to pray for help to his Joss, 
when he ought to have been on the captain 's 
bridge looking out for the enemy and com- 
manding his men. There is no use in pray- 
ing when we ought to act. He who believes 
that prayer can work miracles, and trusts 
that God will at his special request change 
the course of nature, deserves to go to the 
wall; for the highest prayer, nay, the only 



204 OUR CHILDREN. 

true prayer, is to attend to the right thing at 
the right time — in a word, to do one 's duty. 
You need not make atheists of your chil- 
dren nor creed-duped believers. Teach them 
the facts of life, point out the path of right 
conduct ; make them critical and thoughtful 
without treating the errors of others in a 
cynical spirit, and you can safely leave the 
rest of their religious development to their 
own judgment. 



INDEX. 



Abstractions are real, 192. 
yEsop's Fables, 30. 
Alienists divert, 80. 
Allowance in money, 35, 38. 
Altruism and egotism, 19. 
Anger of parents, 74-75. 
Animals, Need of education in 

higher, 3; Sympathy with, 46 ff. 
Antagonize, Do not, 79. 
Anxiety makes anxious, 62. 
Arithmetic, how to be taught, 139. 
Atlantic Monthly, The, 151 n. 
Audacity and fear, 186. 
Augustine, St., 160 ff. 

Barbarism of hunting, 48. 

Bible, Rationalistic treatment of, 

a mistake, 164. 
Blindness, Frequent cause of, 86. 
Bluntness and truth, 28. 
Buckley, Arabella B., 125. 
Buddha, 67, 68. 
Burns, Robert, 37 ff. 

Capital punishment, a necessity, 
70. 

Card-tricks, 109. 

Carlyle, 33. 

Carus, Primer of Philosophy, I34n. 

Caution, Lessons in, 189. 

Cheating and being cheated, 66. 

Child has a right to be active, yj. 

Children and their smaller com- 
panions, 174 ff.; imitative, 6. 

Christ, 68. 

Circumspection, 186; and fear, 
178 ff. 

Classical music, 144. 



Cleaning teeth, S3. 

Clear and subconscious; terms do 
not exclude each other, 107. 

Coaxing, Victims of, go ff. 

Counting in other tongues, 129. 

Credulity, 170. 

Criterion of culture. Truth, 2. 

Critical attitude, 165; sense, De- 
velop the, 167. 

Culture, Truth criterion of, 2. 

Dead languages, 130. 
Demons to be cast out, 59. 
Dentist, Treatment by the, 85-86. 
Development, Onesidedness of, 

168. 
Discretion, 28. 

Dispositions, Child inherits, 6. 
Doing, Learn by, 134. 
Dominion, by naming things, 94. 
Don't say don't, 50 ff. 
Duties of parenthood, 17. 

Eden, Garden of, 53. 
Education, Need of, in higher ani- 
mals, 3; of parents, 13. 
Egotism and altruism, 19. 
Esprit dc corps, 24, 27. 
Evil consequences, Teach by, 55. 
Exorcism, Modernized, 61. 
Experiments in physics, 120 ff. 

I'acts not fancy, 125 ff. 

Fairy-tale period of mankind, 194. 

Fairy-tales, Do not banish, 162; 

need not be abolished, 192 f.; 

Wrong use of, 125 ff. 



206 



OUR CHILDREN. 



Family relation, trinitarian, i6. 

Faust, 18. 

Fear, and audacity, 186; and cir- 
cumspection, 178 ff; Instance of, 
180 ff.; Never excite, 185; of 
mice, 186. 

First, impressions important, 10; 
mistake, 104; steps, 4, 6 ff. 

I'oreign languages, 128 ff. 

Francis of Assisi, St., i. 

Frederick the Great, 49. 

Gambler's trick, 43. 

Games should not be waste of 
time, 148. 

Genius, Condition of, 156; no mys- 
tery, 154; Playful ease of, 155. 

God, and Santa Claus, 195 ff. ; 
Definition of, 201; has not a 
body, 200; What to teach the 
child about, 197 ff. 

God-conception, renders us more 
efficient. The right, 203; most 
important, 197. 

Goethe, s, 18. 

Golden rule, 172. 

Goose fisherman. The, 46. 

Grammar, 129. 

Higher animals. Need of educa 

tion in, 3. 
Holder, Fred., 46. 
Home-work, No use in, 132. 
Homer, 163. 
Hosts, Children as, 176. 
Hunting, Barbarism of, 48. 
Hysterics, 178. 

Ideal, only imperfectly realized, 

9-10. 
Imagination and truth, 22. 
Individuals and the race, 18. 
Infant, the Saviour, 15. 
Infection, Dangers of, 86. 
Insane asylum, Incident in an, 

80-81. 
Instruction by showing, 120. 
Ins'ructive features of toys, 124. 



Kindergarten, 150; not for play, 
151; A vicious habit of, 125. 

Krause, Ernst (Carus Sterne), 13, 
14, 16. 

La Fontaine, 65. 
Latin, Teaching of, 130. 
Lavergne, Georges, 4. 
Legends are realities, 163. 
Liberty, and responsibility, 75; 
Children to be reared in, 93. 
Lullaby songs, 100. 
Luther, 160 ff. 

Mariolatry, 15. 

Mathematical instruction, 134 ff. 

Matthews, William, on money, 36. 

Mephistopheles, 18 f. 

Mice, fear of, 186. 

Money, 34 iT. ; William Matthews 
on, 36; Wrong vise of, 36-37. 

Monist, The, 123 n. 

Mozart, 8. 

Multiplication made easy, 107 f. 

Music, in education, 140 ff. ; pre- 
vents onesidedness, 142. 

Mutuality, 19-21. 

Naming, Significance of, 94 ff. ; 
the products of operations, 135. 
Night-mare, 179. 
Numerals and things, 106. 
Nurses to be chosen with care, 11. 

Onesidedness, Music prevents, 142; 

of development, 168. 
Only child, 176; often spoiled, 

172. 
Ophites, The, 53. 

Pain expelled, 61-62. 

Parenthood, 13 ff. ; Duties of, 17. 

Parents, Anger of, 74-75; Educa- 
tion of, 13. 

Penitentiaries, breeding-places of 
crime, 71. 

Personification of actual things, 
127; of ideas, 190. 



INDEX. 



207 



Peter, St., walking on the water, 
169. 

Photograph, Introduction of, Msf. 

Physics, Experiments in, 120 ff. 

Piano, Knowledge of, indispen- 
sable, 143. 

Piano-playing instrument, 144. 

Playful instruction, 147 ff. 

Plays to be utilized, 148. 

Poetry and romanticism, 166. 

Prayer, self-control, 202; True, 
204 f. 

Prisons, 71. 

Punish, Do not, 67 ff. 

Punishment, Capital, a necessity, 
70; consequences of a wrong 
act, 73 ; in anger, 74. 

Quarrels not an evil, 172-174. 

Race, Individuals and the, 18. 
Rational and rationalistic, 160. 169. 
Rationalism, in the nursery, 160 ff; 

onesided, 161. 
Rationalistic and rational, 160,169. 
Razor-Seller, The, 41. 
Real and true, 166. 
Reason not anti-religious, 164. 
Reil, Island of, 7. 
Religions, Comparison between, 

203; Nature of, 161. 
Reproach in private, 174. 
Responsibility and liberty, 75. 
Retaliation not a cure, 68 f. 
Reverent not superstitious, 202. 
Rolling-mill, 95. 
Romanticism and poetry, 166. 

Sanitary attention to children, 

82 ff. 
Santa Claus, igo ff. ; and God, 

195 ff- 



Scolding makes a scold, 57; There 

should be no, 63. 
Scripture, 123 n. 
Self-control, prayer, 202; ultimate 

aim, 93. 
Self-criticism, 29; Stimulate, 64 ff. 
Shakespeare, 29. 
Singing, 142 f. 
Slightingly of other children. Do 

not speak, 173. 
Spray, Use of the, 88. 
Standard of civilization, 1. 
Starvation cure, 91. 
Sterne, Carus, pseud. See Krause, 

Ernst. 
Stomach has a memory, 92. 
Subconscious and clear; terms do 

not exclude each other, 107. 
Suppress, Do not, 76. 
Sweets, Do not forbid, 92. 
Sympathy with animals, 46 ff. 

Teeth, Allegory of, 193 ff; Clean- 
ing, 83. 

Tesla, Nicola, 157. 

Things and numerals, 106. 

Throat, Diseases of the, 86-87. 

Thunderstorms, loi. 

Toys, Instructive features of, 
124 ff. 

Trick, Gambler's, 43. 

Trinitarian, Family relation, 16. 

"i rue and real, 166. 

Truth, and imagination, 22 ; cri- 
terion of culture, 2. 

Untruths not always lies, 23. 

\'anity, 177; dangerous, 64. 
\'iolin, educational, 143. 

Zeal, Need of, 149. 



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